


Memorials and Observances

by noah_pascal



Series: Dreaming back thru life [1]
Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family, Friendship, M/M, Multi, Not Beta Read, One Shot Collection, Religion, Slice of Life, Verb Tenses Doing As They Please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:30:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noah_pascal/pseuds/noah_pascal
Summary: beginnings and endings and how we spend our lives with family in between





	1. Hosea 2:19, Summer 1970

**Author's Note:**

> Blame for this falls on seeing a copy of _Kaddish and Other Poems_ next to Vince in “Part 3.” Tags and non-sequential chapters to be added as I find more feelings to throw at the screen, but marked as complete because it can stand as is.
> 
> Nothing here should be considered fact, advice, or instruction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The names Claire and Harry for James’s siblings are pulled straight out of “Aunt Rose” by Ginsberg because I can’t help myself.
> 
> Additional Warning for talking around terminal illness, but not really addressing it  
> (and playing fast and loose with the source material, but what else is new)

Jim proposed to her while they were still at university and almost ready to start their final semesters, him finishing his MSTP, her wrapping up the late start on her education and English undergrad work. He’d got on the ground and asked from the cold pavement of the park trails behind her apartment building—without a ring, and she’d checked with Adam that he’d known, pulling him discreetly to the side one night before he’d gone back to Alliance, after another evening where Jim couldn’t stop mentioning their life after graduation, and asked, “Has he talked to you about it? Did you mention I don’t want a ring?”

He’d known, and he stayed there on his knees for ages holding her hands and promising her as much of the world as he could get in northern Ohio. She would have said yes immediately, if he had let her get a word in edgewise, but he was so set on saying such sweet things, she’d kept quiet and let him go on.

The sun was setting by the time he’d worn himself out, and it was cold enough to see his nervous, panting breaths as she tugged him back to his feet. “Of course, I’ll marry you,” she’d said, wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his shoulder. “I love you so much.”

Her rabbi in Cleveland wasn’t going to officiate, and neither will either of the rabbis she’d asked in Canton, but it was worth a shot. She’s never seen James set foot in a church, and she’s pretty sure he hasn’t since his mother let him transfer to public high school, leaving his religious education classes before he was confirmed. Instead, they trudge into the courthouse in the June humidity—because even though James isn't religious, he sure is superstitious—on a Tuesday, because she isn’t above asking for a little extra help either, in the same clothes they wore for practicum and internship to trade thin gold bands in front of a JP.

It isn’t how they were planning to do it, but then it seemed better to rush it instead of waiting around. Her dad's too sick to make it in from Findlay, and she’ll have to drive out all too soon to get him and finish his packing. William and Rose promise they'll be in before long with Jim’s siblings to wish them well, but it’s almost Harry's bar mitzvah, and she’d still been hassling him walking up the steps to their appointment, shaking her head, “I can’t believe I’m marrying you if you’d forget your own brother becoming a man.”

“Em, darling, please,” he’d said, holding the door open for her, his mother, and Adam, “I love you. Let me rest."

Their only witnesses of their own are Adam and James’s mom, who was ready to wind him up again with the idea of being in trouble with the other side of his family. “Oh, poor Harry,” she goads. “He’ll be devastated when he hears about it.”

“Mom, please,” he says, hands in supplication, “I really don’t need this.” Because doctor now or no, they’re both technically without job or home, with a couple three hundred mile trips to plan in a car close to its last legs, and trying to do it all with Jim’s dwindling stipend, embarrassed and guilty to ask her father for more help.

Adam rescues him, pulls his attention away from the round of teasing with a hand on his back and reassures him he’ll get him residency at the children's home as soon as his transcripts show up, and reminds her, “Maryann, let me know when you’ve got everything together. I know they’re still looking for someone just like you.” He steps away from James, lays his hand on her shoulder as he walks past, to offer his arm to her mother-in-law. “May I escort you, ma’am?”

Maryann moves side by side with Jim and takes his hand, leading him to their JP’s door. “I promise I’ll never tell them you almost forgot Harry’s big day.”

“Thank you for being my partner,” he says, raising her hand to kiss her knuckles, “in lying by omission to my family.”

In the end, her parents’ chuppah stayed packed away, no one read the blessings, and no one bothered to bring a glass to break. No one remembered to bring a camera either, so there won’t be any prints to remind them of their shaking hands and voices in front of the judge’s bench, but after their kiss, his mother squealed, let go of Adam, and gathered husband and wife in her arms, crying and kissing their cheeks while they held on to her loving storm. She’s still dizzy from it all on the way back to the car when Adam takes a handful of nuts from his pocket and throws them without warning into the backs of their heads, sending them into squawks and laughter.

 

They couldn’t ask for a better friend than the one they have in Adam. He lets them stay in his two bedroom, takes care that they know where it is because it’s hard to find if you don’t know how it sits away from the road, tells them they can store whatever in his garage while they finish the paperwork and close on the house—the one with a guest room on the ground floor in Louisville, halfway between their jobs in Alliance and the doctors Dad wants to be with in Canton. When she’s planning the first of the trips to her father’s house, he won’t hear of her going alone and sends his kid sister to help. 

She’s only a kid compared to Adam or James. Kimberly’s just a few years younger than Maryann with two more semesters left on her undergrad at Mount Union.

Windows down, _definitely not speeding_ , on US 30 isn’t the best time to ask, but she’s too curious to wait. “Since you’re in sociology,” and once she has her attention, continues, “has Adam been telling you he’ll get you on at the children’s home, too?”

Kim’s shoulders sag. “Yeah, nags me to no end to do an internship. Don’t know what his deal is.” She slouches over, head in hand, and stares at fields and power lines passing by. “I’m going to, but he’s obsessive about it.”

Maryann laughs and says, “Yeah, he gets, uh, kind of intense about what he wants,” because James can get overexcited about his plans, but if Adam thinks he knows best, he’ll grab your hand, and you’re coming, like it or not. All his opinions had worked out for her though— _get your minor in social work, you should live over here, I’ve got the_ perfect _guy for you_.

“He told me he got you roped in.” Kim sits up straight and slaps her palms on her thighs. “So, how’s it feel to know you’re official?”

“I’m terrified.” She squeezes the steering wheel, thinks about all the lesson plans she’s hasn’t made, all the people she’ll be responsible for and to, how she hasn’t even seen her classroom yet. “Pretty sure they shouldn’t be setting me loose.”

Kim looks at her and smirks. “Are you sick of everyone telling you it’s just practice for your own kids?”

Her knuckles strain against her grip on the wheel. “Very.”

 

Her dad makes sure they get a beautiful house to spend their life in, with two stories, half a basement—all of it built just before James was born—and a wooded back yard full more of waybread and mock strawberries than grass. Perfect, he tells her, for kids, and hopefully, there will be a horde of them, even if he never gets to see them there.

“Not that I’m complaining, Miriam,” he said easing himself onto the bed the movers brought over from their old house, “but you’re going awfully fast here. Nothing you want to tell me?”

She looked away and shrugged, told him, “No, Daddy,” and helped him get his pill bottles in order on the bedside table while James brought in boxes from the car.

 

Rose and William come in like they said they would, and the introductions feel like they’re going to stick in her throat. The only family she’s had to impress for most of her life was her father—who has always called her, his only child, princess and sat satisfied with every choice she’s made—and only recently, James’s mother who, based on the gingham granny dress and wide-brim straw hat she wore to their wedding, has an inscrutable taste in decorum she couldn’t hope to understand.

Her husband snaps her out of her worry, takes her hand, and they open the door to a flurry of mazel tov’s directed at them that they return with the same infectious enthusiasm. She’s trading compliments with Claire in the cramped vestibule when James lets go of her hand to grab at Harry’s in a fast up-and-down parody of a handshake, repeating variations of _mazel tov, little man_ , and William steps in to put his hand on Jim’s arm to make him stop jerking his brother around. Rose steps around everyone, arms wide, to welcome Maryann to the family.

Her father belts out his own congratulations to Harry and family as soon as the noise dies down. James drags his siblings into the living room, keen to introduce them to his father-in-law. She brings her in-laws in more sedately to say hello before taking them upstairs to put their things away.

As they come back down, she gets the impression one of the kids might have made the mistake of saying they speak Yiddish, or mentioned that Rose was teaching them, because her dad’s on the window seat speaking it rapid-fire to an audience who has no idea what’s going on. James doesn’t even know enough to say _oytser_ right—Dad tried to teach him something sweet to say, and now her pet name is oyster—but he isn’t going to say anything to make Dad stop with his face turned into his shoulder, barely trying to muffle laughter at the looks on the kids’ faces.

Harry and Claire turn their eyes beseechingly to their mom, who takes pity on them, steps in to translate the unfamiliar parts for them, and Dad looks so tired, but he’s smiling just the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in writing this, i ended up shipping maryann/james/adam so hard i’m ready to launch myself into the sun
> 
> oytser - treasure


	2. Matthew 11:19, 4 May 1969

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, is this just me rubbing my grubby little hands all over Centralia history and getting Weird over names? Yes.
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Additional Warnings for reference to anti-Irish sentiment, gender roles being bullshit, taking scripture out of context

When her husband brought her in from Berwick to meet them for the first time, her would-be in-laws hadn’t seemed too bothered about her, least of all over her being Irish. When she married in, they’d been satisfied that she was religious, domestic, and eager for children. Especially after she gave their family name two more sons, they were fine to leave her alone and found something else to fuss over. No one cared much about her own history. Then the fire started, and she never fucking heard the end of it.

It’s been a hundred years done and gone at this point, but there’s nothing better to do in small towns than let memories and grudges run long. Being kin to one of the Mollies who beat the priest was now an offense so serious, you’d think she’d been the one who spoke the prophesy, that she was the one who said the town would be erased with only their church left standing, that she was the one who damned them all.

That is what they think, though. They blame her in hindsight for the curse coming to fruition, and say, you, of all people, shouldn’t have named your firstborn Daniel. They tell her anyone related to the Molly Maguires, no matter how far removed, should know how the iniquities of the fathers are visited down to the third and fourth generations and shouldn’t have let herself be deceived; God is not mocked.

She didn’t do it to mock God or bring down the righteous anger of Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott. She did it because she was scared, out of place in her husband's home, feeling like she was throwing her son into a lion’s den. She hadn’t meant to throw him into the furnace, too.

Her daughter, born after the fire spread, she named Hannah because she could have used a little grace in her life, but also because, even while holding her daughter, she couldn’t forget how she’d been made a spectacle and ridiculed by her own family while her husband asked, “Why do you care? Aren’t I enough?”

But her second child, baptized in their church down the road from the landfill, when it hadn’t yet been set alight, was named in a fit of spite against the small town attitude that hadn’t quite turned on her, hoping he would conquer and leave this place behind.

Vincent _has_ conquered in his own gentle way, because truly nothing, bar her long dead relation punching a priest, has pissed off her husband's family more than making Vinny happy.

They’re mad he’d rather be at home playing pretend with Hannah instead of tagging after Danny? Good. He’s still seven for another month and change; he doesn’t need to be trying to keep up with a twelve year old, out in the woods looking for steam vents, peering into sinkholes, and whatever else her eldest swears he doesn’t do when she isn’t watching.

They complain he’s too bookish? Sure, and no other seven year old is getting Latin lessons from Father Burke, and no one else saw his face light up when she agreed to his staying late after school once a week. It’s worth all the grief heaped on her for “keeping him cooped up indoors” the first time she heard him saying _et verbum caro factum est_ —and the word was made flesh—to himself.

Nothing she does concerning him would make them happy now, so she doesn’t think a thing of it when, after the first communion commotion dies down, he asks to bring his friend to the get-together celebrating his big day.

His friend’s a little strange for a town this size. He’s older than Vinny, but so much smaller. He’s been in their church since he was born, but he hasn’t made his first communion. He’ll only answer to his unusual nickname. He’s a little bit of a spectacle, too.

If her in-laws screw up their faces when they see her leading her kids back home with Habit in tow, it’s just another drop in the bucket.


	3. Zechariah 13:9, Various

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> subtitled: numbers two and three on the current list of things i'm crying about
> 
> Additional Warnings first part: medical trauma, blood, major character death, alcohol; second part: suicide as a generality

**25 August 2010**

The year she turned sixty-four she started chatting more with the gals in the complex’s office, her hair finally went all white, and her youngest son came back from the dead.

For a moment, she hoped it was some awful doppelganger or a trick of the light that made the past and the present look too much alike. He was tall and thin with hair barely long enough to want to curl, a nervous teenager hunched over outside her door, too close to how she remembered him. Except for the clothes and camera—seemingly misplaced in his hands instead of Evan’s—it’s like 1981 called a do-over and spit him out on the hallway carpet.

She would have thought she was looking at Jeff’s son, but he’s not his. He was too young to belong to the son she watched flatline twenty-nine years ago in hospital linen, whose body she watched lose the fight, even after the ER stitched him back together and filled him with drugs through a line in his chest. Before they pushed her out of the room, the nurses were explaining it was because there were “limited peripheral options,” as if they were talking to someone unfamiliar with his wounds, without his blood on her clothes. When CPR failed, she waited at his bedside alone because James was still speeding from his office to the hospital, and Evan and Vinny were at home trying to calm down and clean up the one sister they had left.

In her apartment, alone, she’s starving to reach out, fold him into her arms, and tell him, _I missed you so much, where did you go_ , but she knows where her Jeff went. They buried him in Union Cemetery, same as they eventually did with Evan, close enough to their old house she could walk to their graves, and she had, often, until James called home from Lambertville. So, he can’t be _Jeff_ , but on the off chance he’s truly a stranger, and not part of the horrible things they’ve run into, she hangs back and asks him what he wants.

Only to have him confirm every terrible thought as he introduces himself as Jeff. Even his voice is the same, stumbling through his thoughts, bizarre as it is to hear him call James “doctor” with a man’s voice. He’d started calling him “dad” right before they brought their kids permanently into their home, when he was still technically a resident, and she’d never heard him slip and call him that again.

“James hasn’t been in practice for quite some time.” Like saying it could enforce the rules. There’s no chance this boy ever knew an actual patient, like one of the kids in and out of the home, like his brothers and sisters. Maybe he knew a casual case, like the boy James happened on in Florida, but he couldn’t know anyone she knew. He wasn’t hers.

He keeps going, asking too much about how it used to be, “—or talked about somebody named Habit?”

The last time she got to see James in person, what was supposed to be the last good memory they had of each other, he got her drunk and told her there was a chance their kids were moving in and out of time, a decade before he stepped out contact with her. They talked about worst case scenarios while he crushed lime after lime and filled the glasses with too much whiskey and too little club soda. They made plans for what to do if the past didn’t stay dead.

Forget, then leave.

She doesn’t get to welcome her son home. She runs him off and shuts the door on him, for both their sakes, and starts planning her move.

 

**October 2016**

Vin had taken his scapular off and shoved it in the back of a drawer long before his friend’s grandma died. As he’d gotten older, he’d just, kind of fallen away and considered himself soundly lapsed after so many years dodging mass and letting the prayers rust on his tongue. He hadn’t thought about the promises made at his enrollment in ages and really hadn’t expected Jessie to remind him.

It was easy to lose concentration sitting there, and he’d let himself focus on the wrong things, like the silver of the key and the bubbling of the fish tank, while Evan and Jess steered the conversation, so he only sort of remembers her trying to wave questions away, thinking Steph knew and would fill them in on the intricacies what she was going through.

He was still paying half-attention, looking more at how Jessie turned to Evan through an LCD display than listening to her raised voice saying, “When I called you, right after the nurse called, I heard her say the blessing. She said it in Hebrew.”

Evan, shrugging and looking to him and Jeff, swore he had no idea what she was talking about. Steph didn’t know any Hebrew, she barely heard any of that phone call, and all he’d heard was her chair scraping across the floor as she headed out to work. He just wanted to know what was up, since Claire barely said hello to him before pointing them to a tray of pastries and hurrying out the door.

Her shoulders dropped, sick of arguing, and she moved on, “It’s, you know, like how you guys deal with purgatory, I guess,” moving her fingers like she was going to grasp her thoughts out of the air. “She’s going to say Kaddish.”

None of them had any idea what she was talking about, but they weren’t saying anything, and their silence drew more out of her.

“She’s going to try to go to as many services as she can for most of the year because you’re only supposed to be under judgment that long.” She’d looked so tired, wrapped in Evan’s arm, trying to find the energy to keep explaining, after she’d already patiently talked them through a binder’s worth of secrets about family no one else would discuss. She abruptly switched gears, talking to them about time limits instead of honoring parents. “To be refined. You’re only supposed to be like that for a year at most, and that’s if you were ‘wicked.’”

Having been the only one who’d known her past the write up in the paper, Evan assured her, “Well, Rose sure wasn’t that.”

“No. The only people I know who say it for the whole time are saying it for people who killed themselves.”

He’d tuned out again, thinking about the medals, wool, and ribbon hidden under his socks, until Jeff asked her if she wanted to take a ride into Trenton to get out of the house for a while.

He thinks about it again, trapped in a sweltering and stinking apartment, and wonders if he’s being refined into something better. As he freezes and sweats, is he being tempered and quenched like a sword? If God’s only supposed to keep you in purgatory for a year, what does it mean that he’s been there for two?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> regarding Jeff’s death, i got stuck on the idea of him protecting Linnie as an additional reason for him shutting down later when it came to Alex, idk
> 
> Jessie thought she heard Steph say, “ _Baruch dayan ha'emet_.”
> 
> borrowed dialogue from ".-"


	4. Job 41:1, Night of 28 December 1974

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> greetings from the surface of the sun, my heart is full of ink ribbon and nerds
> 
> Additional Warnings for worrying about trauma triggers without talking about the cause of PTSD, Too Much Star Trek

Maryann turned the light off in the kitchen and called out as she strode through the dining room, “Who’s got Dr. Roberts’s present?”

James followed behind, carrying the cake box by the ties wrapped around it, whispered to her, “Mr. Roberts.”

“You don’t want to cool it for one day?” she asked, putting her scarf over her hair and knotting it under her chin. She looked away, toward the crowd gathering in front of the coat closet, and suggested, “Maybe wait until he’s unwrapped his books?”

“No, it’s his birthday,” he argued and spun the box in its strings. “I’m required to do it more.”

“Then I’m not going to stop him when he starts the Kirk jokes back at you.”

He swung his arms out, palms up. “You never stop him anyway.”

She grinned and eyed the swaying box in his hand, but didn’t keep the argument going, said to their children instead, “Coats buttoned, all the way, please and thank you.” 

Steph and Evan smiled like they weren’t intentionally getting in each other’s way while sticking their arms through their sleeves seconds ago, Vinny felt at his throat to make sure the zipper was fully closed, and Jeff shifted Adam’s present under his arm to finish doing up his coat.

Em held her hands out, and James passed the box to her. “Dishes done, present accounted for. Lights off?” 

Evan answered for them with _yeah, Mom_ , so the quiet _yes, Lieutenant_ James gave her didn’t diminish her pleased smile as she said, “Okay, let’s go.”

 

They had the boys in the back and Steph between the two of them in the front. Same as usual, but Evan and Steph were wound up over Jeff’s pirate-themed writing project. Evan was especially preoccupied with sea monsters, and Steph twisted around in her seat to wave her arm around like a tentacle to swat at him.

Maryann rested her hand softly on Steph’s shoulder. “Both feet on the floor when someone’s driving.”

James adjusted the review mirror to see what his sons were doing, caught Vinny fidgeting and staring at his feet.

He butt in, loud and jokey, hoping to avoid any _speaking of Leviathan’s limbs_ , “Hey, knock it off with the sea talk. I need you all practicing raising one eyebrow and saying ‘that’s illogical.’”

“Oh, come on, Dad,” Steph halfheartedly complained and turned back around for Maryann.

Evan mumbled, “Who wants to talk about Star Trek.”

“It would be illogical not to comply with the request.”

“That’s the spirit, Jeff!” He moved the mirror back to look at the road and started guessing at how long he’d be sitting to the side with Vinny, if he’d only hear the prologue to John a few times or if he’d be trading off with Maryann while Vinny ran through every psalm he knew until he went hoarse.

“Jim,” she said, and he could barely hear her over Jeff’s litany of _illogical implausible unscientific_ and the begging from Evan for him to stop, “if you keep this up, he _will_ figure out how to give you the nerve pinch.” She glanced behind him at Vinny and smiled.

He told her, trying to adjust the mirror to look at the boys again, “He’s had years to figure it out. If he hasn’t done it by now—”

“Do the eyebrow thing again!”

Steph turned around again to see what Evan was excited about. “That’s cool.”

He got the mirror tilted right and saw Vinny actually raising one eyebrow. “Adam isn’t going to know what to do now.”

 

Kim grabbed James and the kids, and she heard the record player start up across the house from where she was with Adam in the dining room.

“So, what’s wrong?” she asked, stacking plates and dropping forks in cups that Adam carried away.

“Nothing’s _wrong_.”

But something wasn’t _right_. James tried, from the moment they sat down for cake until Kimberly shoved him across the hall, to draw him into conversation about opening an office together after the home finally closed, but he only laughed and said, “That’d be nice,” to everything James suggested. He kept giving non-committal responses to the most innocuous questions. Kept the kids talking, kept spacing out, kept giving thin-lipped smiles while Kim sighed and stared him down over the top of her glasses.

She gathered the coffee mugs together, said to his back as he got the package out of the cabinet, “Well, I don’t think you really needed my help to make stovetop popcorn,” and set the last of the dishes in the sink. Adam took hold of her hand and lifted it away as she reached for the drain plug.

“Stop trying to do the dishes. Haven’t you had enough of that today?” He put his hand on her side and nudged her away.

She told him, as he pulled her with him to the stove, “You know, I’d love to do more dishes if it meant you’d come over more often.”

“It’s gonna,” he said, paused, then stalled while he got the popcorn started. “It’s gonna be a while before I’ll be over again,” then he pressed his mouth against her temple, said the rest into her skin. “I got an offer for a research position.”

“Not at Mount Union.”

Then he said into her hair, her joke having fallen flat, “No, it’s at University of Florida.”

That caught her off guard. Of course he wasn’t going to be working a mile down the road from his house, but out of state hadn’t even crossed her mind. In those few seconds, she thought he’d say he was going back to Case, and he’d only be an hour and a half away a most.

She turned around to see his face, staggered by the idea of it. “You’re moving across the country? Alone?”

“I think I’m old enough to get by.”

“Are you too old to get lonely?” She scrubbed her knuckles over her cheek. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I’ll be back as often as I can.”

A vague promise was better than what they were getting at the table. Better than nothing, better than gone altogether, better than ending it completely. Can’t write letters to a memory.

Before she could start truly crying, she pushed him out. “Go tell him now. He probably has himself worked up already.”

In response, he held her chin, kissed her, and left her the time to compose herself while she stood over the stove listening to the chatter from the family room.

 

Kim met her in the doorway, pillow in her hand. “Hey there,” she said, “didn’t know you were raising an architect,” and gestured at Steph erecting cushions on the love seat like a fort.

“Me either.” Maryann stood there with the popcorn in her hands, watching Steph step away so Jeff could throw a pillow across the room to knock the cushions over. “Guess I know who’s building the sukkah next year.” When Kim didn’t offer anything else, seeming intent on staring through her, she asked, “So, how’s it going over here?”

Kim finally laughed and threw her pillow at Evan. “You get my turn, okay?” She lead Maryann just to the side of the door, outside of the worst of the noise, but where she could still look in at Vinny helping reset the fort.

“Listen, he took James to the garage, and I can only turn the music up so loud. Can you get them to stop?”

Once she mentioned it, Maryann tuned into the muffled yelling she hadn’t caught under the sounds of four teens enjoying themselves. _February—you don’t—_ wrong _with you?_

“Please,” Kim said with a clipped sweetness and took the bowl out of her hands.

 

By the time she cracked the door open, they’d already started wrapping up their argument. She let herself in anyway and closed the door gently.

“Admissions are done. They really don’t need me anymore.”

James’s fingers were locked around Adam’s wrists, like he was stopping him from going out the door then and there. “I thought we were gonna stick together.”

“Who wants to stay in Ohio forever? You don’t even want to stay in Ohio forever.”

“But what am I gonna do without you?”

Adam shook off his grip and laid his hands on his shoulders, squeezed at the joints. He started, “James,” then softer, “Jamie, you’ve got a phone. You’ve got a typewriter. I’m only a letter away.”

James pulled him into his arms and held on tight, pressed their foreheads together.

Adam brought his hands up to James’s head. “You’re really not gonna make this easy, are you?”

She couldn’t hear what James whispered to him.

“ _Beloved_ isn’t going to work this time. I really want to do this,” he said and slotted their mouths together, sweet like he did with her, but then James pressed back hard enough to make Adam grunt, then grin. “I love you. I’m moving, not leaving.”

 

He’d just walked into their bedroom when he heard Em collapse hard on the couch, wondered how long they were gonna make the furniture last between them and four teenagers. It was something more palatable to consider than Adam farther than two hours away, something trivial he could focus on until he had time to himself tomorrow. Then, he could have a good moan about it, enough that he could act like a normal person on Monday and forget how long he sat on their bed agonizing about it.

He heard the creaking of one of the children coming downstairs, and the couch groaned as Maryann stood up. “Everything all right?”

_He brought her close between them, squeezed them both hard, and when he pulled back, Adam dug his fingers into his shoulder, and Maryann brushed his hair back into place from where he’d mussed it against Adam’s face._

_“Everything will work out all right.”_

“Okay, good night. Love you.”

_“Let’s try to have a good rest of the night? I love you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not Pictured: Kim starting all the pillow stuff.


	5. Matthew 11:10, 24 July 1971

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Warnings for the ‘71 letters, referenced fatal asthma attack

She’s standing over Hannah’s dresser shoving her clothes in a suitcase when a horrendous _crack_ echoes through the house. Like the boom of lightning striking a tree, but there’s no flash, and the noise doesn’t end. It keeps on, turning into a sustained, thrumming grind.

Looking south out the window, over the roofs and through the gaps between the lots, she sees a house on Wood Street break apart. Her hair stands on end, and time slows as the whole side comes free, splits apart as it crashes down, peeled open and wrenched apart like an orange. It all goes cascading to the ground, spitting vinyl and brick into a steaming sinkhole.

There’s a whole crowd out enjoying the summer, and all of them go silent, turn and leer, gawking from where they’re frozen in place, trying to process the danger they’re in. No one moves until the house groans again, ready to spill more of its innards into the pit, and everything kicks back to speed. Kids run home; adults call for help.

One of the neighbors steps forward and peers into the wound, leaning over for a closer look like peeking into a dollhouse, then reels back, screaming.

 

Late last year, Ellen and Jeffrey’s father shot himself in the service station after closing for the night. By noon, everyone heard about how the owner found him that morning on the floor of the garage, blood mixing with oil, shotgun still in his hands.

It wasn’t like they were uncommon, even before the colliery closed. The economy had been slowing down for a long time, and it wasn’t going to stop any time soon. As awful as it was, it was just part of life in coal country. But a suicide so close to an untimely death? The town didn’t know what to do with itself.

 

The rumor mill was buzzing before they could bury him and still put out the most outrageous talk even after they got him in the ground. Not that she knew one way or another about it; she didn’t really know him much past his name. The family went to the Methodist church on the other end of town, and his children went to public schools. She said hello when she gassed up the car, nodded at the family in the grocery store. Her sons occasionally mentioned the kids, but they weren’t people she kept up with.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t horrified or didn’t bring his widow casseroles. All she meant was, after they laid him to rest, no one tried asking her, “Did he act strangely when you took the car in? Did he ever say anything odd?” No one pumped her for gossip like they did when social workers took Vinny’s friend out of her house.

 

It didn’t matter how many times she explained it was an asthma attack, his mother wasn’t strangled by anything except the ash in the air, and it certainly wasn’t Habit’s fault; _nothing_ stopped it. People she never spoke to came up, saying “Oh, shame about what happened to the poor thing. Sweet of you to take care of him.” All of them overflowed with mealy-mouthed platitudes until they felt they’d paid enough lip service to ask, “Is it true he killed her?”

 

Later, they asked, “Do you think it happened because you took Evan in?” and followed it with, “I always knew something was off about Father Green,” and countless if-it-had-been-me’s.

 

Then, they came to her asking, “Did you hear it happened again?”

 

She hears Jeffrey’s mother and sister are dead when she stops at the market one last time. The first person to look into the house thought she saw two dead children suspended over a crater of boiling mud, but when the police arrived to block off the house, he woke up and took over screaming where his neighbor left off.

The people in line behind her tell her the ambulance took him to Good Samaritan, but they don’t know where he’ll go with no family left, and she nods her head rhythmically as the cashier keys in her purchase.

The bag boy says, “You must be thrilled they’re not talking about you anymore.”

She rips the sack grabbing it out of his hands and doesn’t cry until she has her kids and herself bundled off to Berwick, where they’ll wait with her mother to hear what the state formally decides to do with Vinny.


	6. Lamentations 1:16-17, Various

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The property” was posted on 9 Av, and James’s 2005 disappearance was on the morning of 10 Av, and my feelings about this have fluctuated between [face down on the floor] and [a line of upside down smiley faces tending towards infinity]. Have a couple drabbles, because I’m losing my mind.
> 
> Additional Warnings for fire and angry dogs

**15 August 2005**

She'll always maintain that the day had been beautiful, dry weather and a gentle breeze in the garden, waiting around with Kim for midday.

Though, she wishes she could say she had known, had run hot, wore a flaming red face stoked by gusts of wind, realized and was prepared for James struggling to breathe through smoky static filling the line, voice choked under sirens.

Kim told her she was ghostly sitting there on the floor. She felt closer to cinders than to spirits and whispered, in a voice damaged by ash, “Can you help me get in the attic?”

 

**29 July 2012**

Vincent didn’t set the fire and neither does he know how to put it out. All he knows how to do is throw himself into the wreckage of burning buildings and struggle to pull himself out. His son is very much a man who perennially runs toward danger only to find himself herded and penned, held down by a legion of vicious, snapping dogs who howl at him, demanding to be fed.

If the way to free him is letting his sanctuary again burn to down embers, so be it. He’ll look over the ruins and begin the restoration anew.


	7. Psalm 70, 24-26 February 1975

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [runs the 2-27-75 letter through a blender] what’s happening what am i doing
> 
> History Note: The Richard/Dick referenced is Richard Beamer, the last superintendent of the home. So, apologies to more real names I’m wrapping up in fictional bullshit. Also, I don’t think I had any idea that home schooling used to be illegal. gonna make the corenthals break the law some more :o
> 
> Holiday Note: 25 February 1975 was Purim. It’s not integral to this story, unless you want to read into the “people saved from destruction” theme. In which case, knock yourself out. Just know Slender Man is the reason we can’t have ~~a wine drunk Maryann~~ nice things.
> 
> Product May Contain Trace Amounts Of: remixed dialogue from the 2-27-75 letter/“The Hidden Videos”
> 
> Additional Warnings for once again, me slamming my disjointed headcanons on the screen and calling it a story, anything in the ‘75 letter, the usual standard of excellence you’d expect from EMH LEOs, smoking, adults presuming that supernatural creatures are human abusers, referenced verbal and physical child abuse, dissociation, and tricyclic antidepressants

There’s a lot to be said for keeping the kids in the home’s school until it closes its doors for good. She and James are right there if there’s an issue during the kids’ transition back to full-time learning. The hospital is available if one of them has a medical emergency. The classes get smaller everyday as more kids go to their foster placements, which means there’s plenty of time for individual attention to catch everyone up to the public school system.

Downsides include Stark County not wanting to spend more money than they have to on Fairmount, so when the heat in the main building went out Friday, it took Richard himself calling the county office to browbeat them into a budget authorization.

She helped migrate the unhappy residents out of the dorms and into their old infirmary beds, but if those kids thought they were upset, it was because they hadn’t wandered past the, uh, _displeased_ voices in the staff room.

Everyone was wholly unprepared for the influx. Not enough secretaries to deal with the paperwork, not enough assistants to watch the non-patients, not enough patience to deal with rooms full of put out children. She hurried out of their way to wait for James with their kids in reception and had come back to the kids sitting there wide-eyed as Richard swore a blue streak in the administration office, demanding a technician _now_.

He called her Sunday and told her school was out at least until Tuesday, depending on parts, the tech, and Stark County’s conditional benevolence. After that, they’d have to see about making alternate plans for school rooms. Classes might end up in the smaller rooms of the main building if they could locate space heaters. More likely, they’ll be in spare hospital rooms.

The hospital staff is really going to be aggravated if the children spread out to their conference rooms, but there isn’t much she can do about it except manage and make do. It’s Richard’s decision, and she’ll go along with whatever he decides. Until then, she’ll be at home, quietly grateful she doesn’t have to work through Esther’s fast this year.

Overall though, the schooling arrangement's working out pretty well, but at some point, they’ll have to find another way to educate their kids. They probably have another year to figure it out, as long as there are enough residents to justify having classes, but she’s already started reaching out to nearby high schools. Unsurprisingly, no one’s excited to take them on once they hear their prospective students are _those_ kids from Fairmount.

Maybe the private Catholic school will have pity on them, for Vinny and Evan’s sake if nothing else, and strike a home schooling deal with them.

They have time before she and James have to start making any difficult decisions. For now, she and the kids get to spend the morning goofing off. They’re working on art projects in the living room, and instead of catching up grading, she’s planning for an afternoon rolling out dough. Maybe, if she has the helpers, they can make enough hamantaschen to fill every mouth in the hospital, and then no one can complain about them taking over a conference room or two.

Soft footsteps pull her out of her flour calculations, and she sees Jeff creeping into the dining room. “Hey, Mom?” he asks. “Can we go outside?”

She knows they know. They’ve heard it as much as she has, from the radio Evan always has on, but as the only adult in the house, she’s obligated to say, “It’s below freezing out there.”

“Yeah, but we really need to plan a fight scene.”

She rests her arms on the table, leans towards Jeff, and clarifies, “You want to go outside, in the cold, and hit each other with sticks?”

“Yeah?” he says and shrugs. He looks over his shoulder at the expectant faces spread across the living room floor then back to her. “Please?”

There’s no reason they can’t go out. It’s really not that cold, and there’s not much snow. They’re still trying to encourage them to speak their minds, instead of wilting whenever an adult looks in their direction, and to have the confidence to ask for things. “Okay,” she says, “but no running around in the trees.”

He pushes his tongue against his cheek and tries, “What if we don’t go in far?”

Well, encouragement within reason. She doesn’t think they need to be play fighting on uneven, snow-covered ground, and she tells him, “Unless you’re gonna say this is the scene where you fight about lumber for your ship, no.”

Evan, Steph, and Vinny are already slinking off to the coat closet, so he doesn’t have much of a choice but to agree and head off with them.

She comes into the kitchen ahead of them, then looks them over as they file in and put their shoes on by the back door. No one looks upset; no one looks like they’re angry; no one looks reluctant or withdrawn. There’s no reason not to let them outside.

“I’m serious about staying near the house. If I need you, you have to be able to hear me.”

“Yeah, Mom, okay, sure,” they say and barrel out the door. Jeff goes right, onto the patio, with his composition book. Everyone else goes left under the carport for their branches and comes back around already poking each other, but as Jeff reads from his notebook, they take their places. Vinny and Steph line up together, swords out, two-on-one against Evan, who flicks his branch through the snow, playing at bravado.

It’s mostly stage direction, not a battle yet. Jeff takes notes and points, and the others occasionally clash their swords at his request. She stays in the kitchen, putting flour and oil out, glancing back to the window frequently, not wanting to miss the real performance.

Maryann’s reaching for sugar and poppy seeds and wondering if she shouldn’t start making the filling now when there’s a muffled shout of “Enemy fire!”, and a kickball launches into Evan’s back. Jeff, pencil behind his ear and notebook under his arm, turns around and attempts a sprint, but Evan’s immediately behind him swatting at his legs. Steph and Vinny run off after them, back towards the carport.

She’s at the back door, hand on the knob, ready to tell them to cut it out, when the radio goes nuts. Its low traffic and weather updates spike in volume, and the speakers quickly hit their limit. The noise turns into a high frequency whine that fills the house and drills into her ears.

She claps her hands over her ears, shuddering at the piercing squeal, marches into the living room, and slams the wall switch off with her elbow. Then, for good measure, she jerks the plug from the outlet and glares at the radio for falling apart so soon.

In the sudden silence, it’s easy to hear that Evan and Jeff’s scuffle is over. She looks out the front window, expecting to see them sitting in the snow laughing it off, but they never made it to the front yard. The snow clearly hasn’t had any feet running across it. So, they must still be on the driveway.

She puts her shoes on and steps out front, laps the house, and can’t find them. Or any trace of them. No sticks, no paper, no footprints leading off to the trees. They’re not in the house, either. She yells her way from the bottom to the top and still doesn’t find them. She drives into town, stopping to ask anyone on the street if they saw them, and checks the general store they like so much. No one has seen them, so she begs the clerk for the phone, then begs James to tell her he had someone from the home pick them up.

No. They’re gone.

 

She obviously hadn’t been thinking about what kind of picture she makes, but as the desk officer’s eyes go wide at the sight of her, she realizes she must look like a wreck. No coat, wet from snow and sweat, skin gone too pale everywhere but her aching ears and nose. Distressed enough that they sit her down immediately, ready to take their descriptions until she tells them their ages, and they’re even less interested when she mentions their health.

He’s shaking his head and tapping his pen against the desk, lecturing her, “Teenagers run off all the time. They’ll show up later.”

The color’s coming back to her face, hot red creeping up her neck, and she reminds him, “They have severe psychological disorders. They have medication they need.” She bites her lip and adds, “Medication that can cause them to faint and hurt themselves.”

“Mrs. Corenthal,” he says distractedly, “if they need medicine, that’s all the more reason they’ll turn up soon. When do they get it next?”

“At noon. They get their next doses at noon, and it’s very important they don’t miss—”

He cuts her off, saying, “Then it sounds like you need to be at home waiting for them.” He stands, gestures towards the door. “If they’re not back by nightfall, call us.” He pauses as she stands and then follows close behind her, all but physically pushing her out.

“On the non-emergency line,” he continues, holding the door open for her. “But it shouldn’t come to that.”

He doesn’t bother letting it close all the way before starting in to his coworkers, “Christ, if we went after every Fairmount reject—”

 

After her drive back across town, long and slow enough there was time to panic over her children and her marriage, James pounces on her in the doorway. Her nerves have her unbalanced, and she lurches into him, clutching hard to his shirt sleeves. Washed out and unsteady himself, he holds her and chants, “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. I’m so sorry,” past her, out the open door.

 

He calls hospitals while she changes out of her wet clothes. She calls Kim and every neighbor they have a number for when he can’t bear to keep asking about who was brought in and in what kind of state. While there’s still light, they walk through the trees behind theirs and their neighbors’ properties, looking for anything that belonged to them, a glove or a hat or a pair of glasses. They check parks and bus shelters and ask cashiers at gas stations.

It’s long past dark when she calls the police station, but, still, no one is in a hurry to help.

 

Officers come in the afternoon to poke around the yard and treeline. One looks in the upstairs bedrooms, and another glances around the basement. They finally take down their descriptions, ages, blood types, and nicknames, and they promise excruciatingly little.

“I know. I know, but stay positive. We see this happen a lot,” and he carries on, full of theories about where they are, while she turns his business card over in her hands. “And we’ll call Centralia and give them a heads up in case they’re moving that way.”

James had the thought last night that maybe they were sad and homesick, that Jeff was caught up thinking about funerary flowers, or Stephanie needed to see her empty house to believe it was over. Maybe Vinny wanted his birth mother or his little sister. It could have been Evan’s desperation to find out why his older brother stopped visiting and calling that sent them off.

“Ma’am?”

James was up and down all night, going out back with an ancient pack of cigarettes, going out front to watch the road, and coming back to bed cold and smelling like old smoke. Then he’d get up and do it over again while she laid there worrying that every time she and James left the house to look for them that had been when the kids had tried to call. James finally fell asleep about the time she stopped trying and got up to call Dick, delirious, to say the kids aren’t home yet, and we’re not coming back this week—good luck with your furnace.

The officer has to touch her wrist to get her attention.

“Call us if you think of anything else that could help.”

 

They go back to their own search after the police leave, but missing person reports aren’t magic, and there’s still no sign of them. The hospitals have no unclaimed adolescents, and the bus stations haven’t seen any unaccompanied minors. None of them turned up on Fairmount’s lawn or stumbled onto Kim’s doorstep.

Looking through their rooms again is pointless. Vinny hasn’t tacked any maps on the wall next to his holy cards. There’s no shift in the subjects of Evan’s photos, no abrupt turn from faces and interiors to the tail lights of cars or planes flying overhead. No mysterious scraps of paper in Jeff’s things, nor any notes in the margins of Steph’s sketchbook.

They’ve vanished, and there’s nothing in the Canton-Massillon metropolitan area to show where they went.

Now, with daylight gone and everything closed, they can only wait for calls. It’s James’s turn to answer, and he’s set himself up like the coffee table’s in a courtroom. Water, legal pads, a whole cup of pencils—a nearly empty box of tissues—and the phone, waiting to be put on trial.

It’s her turn to lay her head on his thigh and wait for the painkillers to kick in with a wet rag over her swollen eyes. She lets herself drift off thinking about the ash from the children’s old home and how James’s stress smells like smoke.

 

The phone ringer jolts her awake, and James has it off the hook immediately, saying _hello, hello_ , then shouting _Jeff_.

She’s upright so fast she goes dizzy, staring at the phone as James begs to know where they are. Jeff isn’t answering him, and he keeps pleading for a response. Suddenly, his face flushes and his lips pull back, teeth out and ready to tear into a rant, and just as fast, he falls into himself, pushes his glasses up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, that’s—okay. Okay, thank you.” He grabs for paper and pen and scribbles out directions going east on I-80. “Thank you, yes.”

He covers the mouthpiece and tells her, “They are safe in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. That is past Centralia, past my parents’ house, and practically in New Jersey.” He takes his hand away and says, “Officer, I have no idea why they’re in Pennsylvania.”

She’s across the room, shoving her feet into shoes, as James tries to get off the phone. He’s saying, “I’m sure I won’t know until I see them,” and, “We _are_ practically in Canton. It’ll be five hours before we’re there,” while she throws his coat at him and runs to the kitchen.

That’s optimistic. That’s about how long it took the last time they went to see Rose and William, but farther than that, at night, in the snow? They’ll be lucky if they make it wherever this is before four.

From the back of the house, she can’t hear what he says to end the call. He’s much louder about letting the handset hit the cradle and heaving himself off the couch—those sounds she can make out clearly over the rattle of tossing their pill bottles in her pocketbook. She shouts back to the living room, “You think they’ll be able to talk about it when we get there?”

“No, probably not.” He shuffles into the kitchen after her and explains, “Jeff sounded awful. Before he passed the phone off, he couldn’t get his words out.”

He seems dazed, staring at the baking supplies she never put away, and it takes him a second before he continues, “We can ask, but I think it’ll be some time before we get answers.”

“We’ve waited this long. What’s a few more hours.” She puts the last bottle away and asks, “Where am I driving?”

His eyebrows draw together, like he’s going to argue. Instead, he yawns and thrusts the keys and directions into her hands. “We’re going to some restaurant called Memorytown to meet an Officer Matten.”

 

James had closed his eyes and leaned against the car while waiting for her to unlock it, had seemed relaxed and dozing as she drove, but he asks, “What’s wrong?” almost as soon as she pulls over.

“Have to wait a minute. Wind’s blowing the snow around too much.” They’re barely over the Pennsylvania state line. It’ll be sunup before they get the kids if they have to cross the whole state stopping every few miles because of visibility.

She looks at James and opens her mouth to complain about the weather, but he tenses up strangely in his seat. His shoulders stiffen as his head lays resting against the window. He asks, “Do you need me to drive?” but doesn’t shift away from the glass.

“No, it’ll be fine once it stops gusting.” He doesn’t acknowledge her, won’t move his face away from the window. “Are you okay?”

He says too fast, “Yeah,” and he turns towards her. “Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“Okay, well, you can sleep.” She reaches for him and weaves their fingers together. “I’ll get us moving again.”

He squeezes her hand and doesn’t turn back to the window.

 

James is out the door, running and slipping to the lighted building by the lake, before she can get the car parked, before she has time to do more than tap the brakes. From inside the building, a uniformed man opens the door and leans outside. He must have been watching for them, expecting to greet them, shake their hands, and have them behave in a way that befits his status as an authority figure. Instead, James charges past him, yelling the kids’ names, and the officer’s left staring at Maryann in the dome light of the car.

 

Matten seems unfazed as she approaches the door. Glancing between James frantically clutching at their children and her, he stops her by the door and introduces himself, far from where the kids are sitting and out of sight of most of the restaurant. He starts giving her an abbreviated report of the night he’s had.

“I was on patrol on 940 and saw your kids walking east along the side of the road. They really didn’t want to talk, acted pretty disoriented.” He looks across the room, towards the lake, then towards the kids.

James darts around the table, nudging Evan’s head to look him in the eyes. He delicately touches Jeff’s nose, examines Stephanie’s fingers, and coaxes Vinny’s shoes off to look at his toes. There are untouched plates on the table, and they each return to starting listlessly at the food as James takes his hands away. In this moment, he’s not their father. He’s Dr. Corenthal, and the whole tavern shuts up to hear as he pulls up a chair and clasps his hands together on the tabletop, but James is only giving them the usual talk: location, date, you are safe now.

“Figured their parents would be nearby—they looked like they’d only been outside for a few minutes, so I didn’t bother taking them back to the station. Brought them here, but when I finally get them to say something, they think they’re in Ohio.” He shakes his head and continues to stare. “Weirdest thing I’ve seen in a while.”

Matten wants an explanation for their unresponsive behavior, for them walking unhurt out in the cold, but if she knew, she wouldn’t be here speaking to the police again. She tells him the only thing they’re sure of, “They disappeared out of our yard on Monday.” Then, she asks what she hadn’t wanted to consider, “They didn’t run away, did they? Someone took them and dropped them off in the woods.”

“They haven’t said as much, but they definitely didn’t walk the whole way there.”

Maryann lets out a shaky sigh. “Well, thank you for taking care of them. Do you...have a card in case our detective wants to talk to you?” She needs this conversation over now, needs to tell James that they hadn’t wanted to come here, hadn’t even known where they were.

“Yes,” he says, jerking his attention away from their kids and fumbling the cardstock out of a holder. “Absolutely, have him call—”

James comes up beside her, folds his hand around her shoulder, interrupting Matten’s advice, “I’m calling Rose and seeing if we can stay there.” 

She starts to say, “Sure, that’s a good idea,” and gets most of it out before he takes off again, but she can’t fault him for hurrying. It’s past four in the morning, and the roads have only gotten worse since she pulled over just inside Pennsylvania. Even though it's awkward to be left again staring at Matten while he runs off, they don’t have time to wait around when it’ll be at least another hour drive back to his parents’ house.

With four hurting children.

She takes his card and says, “Will you excuse me, please?”

“Of course.” Matten rests himself against on the wall next to the door, then offers, “Hope everything works out for you.”

 

Out before for the salt trucks, it’s almost six by the time they finish their slow and silent trip. 

Not hushed in the way kids expecting a lecture might behave, trying to make themselves small and hoping they’d be forgotten—in their post-incident-group-relapse way. Silent and still in the way where, had they been at home, they wouldn’t have moved them, would have let them sit it out where they chose, but they were an entire state away from home, and she and James had to practically carry them to the car. Silent in a way that had her terrified their minds stayed east, and they were only bringing their bodies back.

But as James drives them farther west, they start to become more aware. Steph flexes her hand when Maryann rubs her thumb across her knuckles. The boys sigh and make small noises. They still aren’t talking or making eye contact, but they’re lucid enough that they can walk into the house if their parents hold on to them.

Only Rose is waiting for them, watching them come up the drive and meeting them outside to scoop them into her house. Taking their coats, she explains the weather closed Harry and Claire’s school, so they’ll be seeing them eventually.

“Probably not before we get you in bed, though. You know teenagers,” she says and directs her, James, and their teenagers towards the couch.

“I didn’t scare them awake with the phone call?” James asks, encouraging Jeff and Stephanie to sit, while Maryann does the same with Evan and Vinny.

“They have no idea. They haven’t learned to be scared of the phone ringing at night.”

James crosses himself.

“William doesn’t know yet, either. He took his chances driving to the office before you called.” Rose puts her hand on James’s arm and tells him, “He’s going to be so upset if he doesn’t make it back in time to see you.”

James is just polite enough to wait for her to leave the room before rolling his eyes. 

Regardless of James’s feelings about his father, he really does adore Rose. After they have everyone’s pills in them, and their shoes off, and bed arrangements settled, he kisses her on both cheeks, says, “Thank you, Rosie,” and hugs her—the same way he then hugs Steph. Rose waits for Maryann to kiss James goodnight, hold each boy’s hand, and tell them, “I love you. I’ll see you in a few hours,” before leading her and Steph to Rose’s bedroom.

Maryann helps Steph sit down on the bed, tells her, “I love you. You’re doing so good.” She takes Steph’s glasses, sets them on her nightstand, and glances at Rose getting them extra quilts. “We’ll get to sleep in a minute.”

To Rose, she says, “Thank you, so much, I’m sorry we had to ask you for this.”

Rose pauses and stares at her, gravely. “Don’t ever apologize for needing help.”

She straightens up at the look on Rose’s face and ducks her head, keeps it down and holds still even after accepting the blankets.

“Maryann, you are my daughter.” Rose takes her hand, still wrapped around the blankets. “If you need _anything_ , I’ll be around downstairs after we put my grandchildren to bed. All right?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Yeah. Thank you, Rose.”

 

The kids come back to themselves all together, just like how they go under.

Maryann feels the blankets shift as Steph wakes up. Wrapped in quilts with her voice gone small, she asks, “Where are we?”

“We’re in Pennsylvania, with Dad’s family. Do you remember why we’re in Pennsylvania?” she whispers, hoping a soft voice will soften the blow.

It doesn’t. The color drains out of Steph’s face, and she bites her lip, shrinking down under the covers.

She doesn’t have a chance to say more, yet—Jeff is screaming, and Steph is peeling herself out of the blankets, fumbling her glasses on. She looks to Maryann for help, seemingly reluctant to go running through a stranger’s house.

“Come on,” she says, moving towards the door to lead her upstairs, “let’s go find your brothers.”

 

“We’re not mad at you. No one’s in trouble, but we need to know what happened, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she explains after they gathered them into Rose’s bedroom, trying for privacy and security, and arranged themselves facing each other on the floor.

Evan’s face is pinched, his voice defensive. “We were just playing a game; we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Steph, Vinny, and Jeff flick their eyes back and forth from Evan to each other, but no one gives up anything else.

“No, we know you didn’t do anything wrong,” James agrees. “But we don’t understand what happened, and we’re very frightened.”

Vinny squirms on Maryann’s right and after a few false starts, gets out, “We used to do it all the time in the home. Every weekend.”

From Maryann’s left, Steph mumbles after Vinny, “He said he wanted us to find something.”

“He got us there in an instant.” Jeff seems to be talking more to himself than anyone else. “I don’t know why we didn’t get home.”

James face goes dark. “Did he work at Fairmount? Can you tell me his name?”

Maybe his name is the blood rushing in her ears watching dread wash down their faces. Maybe it’s in the background noise of the house creaking in the wind, in Rose asking Harry to go through his dresser and Claire walking downstairs. Maybe his name is silence.

“If he told you you couldn’t tell us, that’s not true. We want to know, so we can make sure he can’t do this again.” Maryann tries to reassure them, “Whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”

They keep quiet, cross their arms across their chests, then dig their fingers into their knees. Their distress is palpable—an extra, unseen person in the center of their circle that they turn their faces from. They look at their laps, at the door, and blinking, at the ceiling.

Deciding they’ve pressed them hard enough, James relents. The doctor she saw in the tavern is gone, and it’s just their father telling them, in a thick voice, “It’s all right if you can’t talk about it now. You can come to us whenever you’re ready.”

 

Stephanie was ready to be gone the second she woke up fully dressed, not knowing what day it was in an unfamiliar room. If wishing worked for anything, she would have been home before she opened her mouth. Then, when her mom told her they were in Pennsylvania, she didn’t think she was ready to get out of bed after all. 

If Jeff hadn’t had a nightmare, she’d still be trying to turn herself into a turtle with blankets for a shell, but she would never willingly ignore someone who needed her—especially when it was her brother.

Although, by the time they had Jeff calmed down, she would have given anything to teleport to anywhere but Pennsylvania.

Four not-quite-strangers had gathered around, wanting to talk to them. People she’d seen in her dad’s photo albums, more family, her new grandparents, and they were saying _the roads are worse, you’ll be driving in the dark, stay here tonight_. Her dad’s little sister was thrilled they were going to stay and asked Steph to sleep in her room tonight, have a real sleepover. Her excitement made her seem as young as she was in the photos at home.

Maybe Claire seems too young because Steph is kind of old to be her dad’s daughter. She doesn’t think much about how old James and Maryann are. It’s not important, and who cares if people do the math on her parents and brothers and know she’s being adopted. It’s just, you know, a little weird because of how it used to be, living with an aunt and uncle, and now, her uncle is going to be eighteen in June, and her aunt just turned fifteen.

Claire at least seems to think it’s hilarious that she has nephews and a niece her age and won’t stop playing up the aunt stuff. Like now, she’s propped up on her pillows, staring at Steph, wheedling her, “You know you can tell your auntie anything.”

She curls her lip even though Claire probably can’t see it in the dark. “Ugh, that’s weird. I’m not calling you that.”

“Steph!” She says it in her normal voice, but it’s too loud in the room, and she worries someone will come shush them, how they used to in the home before Dad put them away from the others. Even Claire seems to realize and look at her door, but when no one comes in, she tries again in a whisper, “Why did you run away? I know James can be an asshole, but is Maryann, like, secretly awful?”

Steph’s stunned by the idea that her parents could ever be worse than what she used to live with, that the constant _trust me, I’m a doctor_ jokes or her mom’s overprotective streak could ever be worse than all the hateful words, and all the bruises, and no way on her own to make it stop.

She can’t even find the voice to complain when Claire leans over and squishes her turning the lamp on.

Claire examines her shocked face in the light. Steph has no idea what she sees that makes her gasp and bounce, but then she asks, “Do you have a boyfriend you can’t tell anyone about? Did your brothers try to stop you from seeing him? Is that it?”

She wants her medicine to kick in, take her under, let her fall asleep _now_ , because she cannot understand what Claire is talking about or why she thinks guessing about it is fun. Steph didn’t want this. She wanted to be home days ago, but there’s so much snow in the way. There’s too much snow and too much ice, and there’s no one setting fires out here to melt it away.

She can feel herself drifting away, like when her parents asked why it happened, and Claire finally notices she’s not all present anymore, asks warily this time, “Steph? What happened?”

Steph forces herself to talk, just to get Claire to stop making that worried face over her. “I don’t know.”

Claire doesn’t stop. Her frown gets worse, and she’s still asking questions. “Are you okay? Do you want me to get James?”

Steph shakes her head. “I don’t know. No. I’m fine.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.” Claire hesitates and stretches her hands out, then reaches over without squishing her this time and gives her the same worried look before turning the light off. “Good night, Steph. I’m sorry.”

She tells Claire it’s okay, and Claire lays down next to her, brushing her fingers against Steph’s hand.

Steph stays awake for a long time after, with her brain drifting on a sea of _I-don’t-know’s_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bullshit notes:  
> 1\. i should rename this collection to “but did you think about what this is doing to your poor mother?”  
> 2\. excuse me, myself, what is your fucking hang up about coats and shoes  
> 3\. i wrote the radio freaking out then realized i was listening to Silent Hill music oops


	8. Hebrews 12:1, Various

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Someone needs to give this man a break,” I say, continuing to heap my bullshit on Vin.
> 
> borrowed lines from [prayers to](https://www.catholicfaithstore.com/daily-bread/prayers-saint-maria-goretti/) [Saint Maria Goretti](https://www.mariagoretti.org/specialprayers.htm)
> 
> Additional Warnings for sexual assault, gore, death—the Reverend Green trinity, if you will—the sexual assault, martyrdom and self-harm of saints, gender feelings, brief misogyny and homophobia, victim blaming

**28 May 1967**

He wants to be a saint, but he isn’t like the saints Danny admires. He isn’t Sebastian tied to the tree, accepting the arrows no matter where they land, and he isn’t like Florian, swearing he will walk into the fire himself if the soldiers would only light it. He definitely isn’t like Lawrence, cheerfully accepting his roasting over the coals.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever be like they were, but he tries to be like Joan, fearless and guided by God, fighting for something good.

Danny takes him outside, thrusts a play sword in his hand, and tells him he’s George. “And I’m Michael. We’re gonna kill a dragon.”

His mom tells him he’s like John, beloved and not asked to be a martyr, a boy drawn close to Christ’s burning heart and running to the resurrection. 

He showed Danny the medal she got him, Jesus’s lips cast in tin and pressed to John’s forehead. He said, “Yeah, that’s perfect for you,” and made kissing noises at him whenever Mom left the room.

Out in the woods, Danny moves too fast. He wants to be like Hubert, an honorable huntsman tracking his prey, and when the trees trip Vinny, roots rising up out of the sinking dirt, Danny doesn’t want to give up the chase. 

He cries because he’s hurt and his brother won’t help, and Danny throws his sword down and heaves him up off the ground. 

“You need to grow up. You’re not a girl,” he says, stomping off.

 

**24 February 1971**

“You,” his grandmother tells him, “are a little Saint Pancras. You just don’t know how to quit when you’re ahead.”

He really doesn’t see the resemblance. Pancras was defiant and rangy with a too-long neck in all his portraits, like God intended for the executioner to have the best shot possible. Vinny is a chubby nine year old who cowers when his priest lays his hand on the back of his neck, treating him the way he does Badger when he barks too loud.

Vinny isn’t Pancras confronting the emperor, refusing every order until he’s taken apart at the end of a sword. There aren’t going to be any palm fronds, lilies, or white crowns waiting for him. He’s ashamed that he can’t face his trials, and he’d make a thousand sacrifices on strange altars if it meant it’d stop.

He tries praying to Barbara and Agatha, firm in their faith and saved from their pain, but he’s just a scared little boy, and his face is being held to the flames, and no one’s coming to put the fire out.

 

**12 April 1971**

He is no martyr. He is no saint. He is Susanna, trapped by people he was supposed to trust, unveiled and being lead away for another execution.

But a prophet with no mouth speaks for him. Man is his Daniel.

Man has no eyes, but he’s seen hands laid on him. Man has long arms to separate him from those who would hurt him. Man has limbs like the holm, and the clove, and the yew.

Man is here to convict, and the angel of God is waiting to split the reverend in two.

 

**7 September 1977**

“—to shed thy blood and sacrifice life itself to defend thy virginal purity—” his classmate reads, and Vinny scowls in his folding chair, anger welling up in him, and asks himself how bad does he want to make it to his confirmation?

“—strayed from the path—”

How bad does he want to be placed in God’s grace? Bad enough to sit through a lecture on purity, in a musty basement, and be told how to behave modestly, not drag others into sin?

“—stain our souls with sin—”

Bad enough to sit here and hear that he was the one who was responsible, that he was dirty for a choice he didn’t make?

“May we who have lost this innocence kneel humbly in Holy Penance—”

Maria Goretti was barely older than he was, and she kicked and screamed and plead with Alessandro for the sake of his own soul until the moment he put her down. Her mother got to see her beatified and canonized, a martyr for chastity. Maria didn’t want a Man to help her.

The teacher looks at him sitting at the table, straight-backed and glowering and surrounded by people who don’t get it, and smiles.

Vinny wants to be Rose smearing peppers on her face to make herself revolting. He wants to be Agnes naked in the streets, striking men blind. He wants to be Judith, and his teacher is Holofernes spurting out his blood on the bed, his head rolling across the floor.

He’s lightheaded in his rage, and when Evan comes to get him, he’s pale and sweating, pressing his forehead into the table.

“What’s wrong, buddy? Feeling emotionally inadequate today?”

He grunts into the wood.

“Come on, Vin, Mom’s driving. She’ll get you home quick.”

He lets Evan lead him outside, and he mutters prayers to Dymphna under his breath.


	9. Ruth 1:16-17, Various

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot of words to say a lot of nothing, so...business as usual ;)
> 
> Additional Warnings  
> First Part: Talking/Not Talking About Deaths, Background Steph/Evan, Pregnancy, Closeted Character, Hyperventilation, talking about being given “the silent treatment,” Poor Communication with Brief Mentions of Self-Harm/Scratching, Blood, Drug Use, Vomiting
> 
> Second Part: Body Horror (in a dream), Talk of Drinking Alone and Smoking, Too Many Adverbs  
> Note: **Albert** , owner of Cedar Gardens; **Jack and Doris** , Mayor Rafferty and his wife

**February-April 2012**

Jeff’s house didn’t become the default hangout for the reasons his and Evan’s and Daniel’s (and Jessie’s, Jessa’s, Nick’s, Ryan’s…) parents assumed. Not having _legitimate adults_ around didn’t turn it into some sort of opium den or sex parlor. There weren’t wild parties or strangers showing up all hours of the night. Like Jeff would ever let that stuff happen around his brother.

It was just that, especially with no Sparky around, it was too lonely for Alex and Jeff on their own.

Mostly too lonely for Jeff. Or, sometimes too much for Jeff when Alex wouldn’t stop it with the boombox. And too overwhelming for Jeff when something would break around the house, and Alex couldn’t understand why Mom and Dad weren’t helping them. Frankly, Jeff needed a lot of help that his relatives weren’t giving him, and having his friends over made everything seem slightly less awful.

He would’ve thought by this point they’d proven themselves responsible, but as it was, Vin’s parents were more likely to believe that he’d gone there to have a drunken orgy than to clean. “We were scream singing in the kitchen while emptying out moldy Tupperware,” was somehow more implausible than, “We ate way too much weed, got dizzy, and threw up,” which was ridiculous. That only happened _once_ and in _Evan’s_ basement, thank you very much.

Well. Okay. But they didn’t know about that, and he still didn’t understand why they thought they’d be getting up to any of that _now_.

Aside from the heartbreaking fact that they had lost yet another friend, everyone was busy, dealing with their own stuff. Evan and Steph were nesting in their new apartment, Daniel had a new job, and Alex was spending more time with his own friends outside of the house. Meaning, when Vin and Jeff weren’t at school or work, they were frequently left to their own devices. Not that _that_ was a problem for them.

Especially when it meant Vin could really take his time saying goodbye to Jeff, let Jeff push his hair back and pull his face close while Vin tugged at his bottom lip and chased after his mouth, could use their time alone to leave more marks under the collars of their shirts and dig their fingers into one another’s hips, like they weren’t going to see each other in a few hours.

Even after he pulled himself away, Vin stalled for more time, stood by the door playing with Jeff’s hands, and tried to find one more thing to say. He reminded him that he’d definitely get Alex, so Jeff could work his early morning shift, said he’d check on Evan and Steph when he got home. He told Jeff he loved him, that he’d see him tomorrow.

He babbled so long that Jeff squeezed his hands and pushed him out the door.

“Go home,” he said, but he still followed Vin out on the porch and pulled him close one more time to peck his temple, got a mouthful of hair for his trouble. “Ugh, you caveman. Get out of here.”

He went, waving as he pulled out onto the street.

 

Steph texted him as he turned into his driveway, before he had the chance to overthink what he was going to say. She saved him the trouble and told him flat out _shit’s not great_. He read, sitting in his car, that Evan had been miserable all day, blaming himself over and over. He’d broken down getting his suit out, talking about her blood on him and how if he could have run faster, she’d still be here. He’d scratched at himself where he was supposed to have scars and wouldn’t stop until Steph jerked his hand away.

He shut the car door as she told him Evan had only just settled down and was resting with his head in her lap.

-While i still have one

-And how are you feeling?

-Fucking sad and pretty gross :x wanna stop getting sick soon

As he walked inside, his mom interrupted his response, stopping him to ask, “What’s wrong with your hair?”

Thinking she was complaining about how shaggy he let it get, he said, “It’s…long?”

“It looks like someone dragged their hands through it,” she said, and he tried not to wince.

He told her, feeling himself turn red, “Then it’s from me driving with the window down.”

She huffed and pushed some of it back in place. “In February? Are you getting sick?”

“Um, maybe,” he said, hedging, giving himself an excuse for his flushed face and a reason to escape. “I should probably lay down. Since I have to get Alex tomorrow, too.”

She let him alone without anymore comments about his wild hair or growing blush, and he finished his text to Steph, offering to buy her more ginger (“Sure thanks dad :p lol”) and telling her he’d be there early for her and Evan (“<3”). He went to his room and checked that all the pieces of his suit were laid out, that his phone was charging, that his camera had an empty memory card. He got into bed and sent one more goodnight text to Jeff, promising that he and Alex would be waiting for him at the graveyard.

In the end, he made Jeff wait on him, didn’t show up until long after the sun had gone down, and the mourners went home.

 

The driveway was full by the time he made it back, and they had the whole house lit up, like it was supposed to be a beacon to guide him back. It hadn’t helped.

Hard to see the light behind the tar smeared on the car’s windows.

In his panic, it’d taken him forever to find his way out of the woods. The world looked normal, but the paths looped strangely around themselves, seeming to lead him back in on himself. His body gulped in air faster than he could handle, and his mind couldn’t work to straighten them out. Every time he stopped to pick the next trail, shapes moved between the dark, thin trunks, and he couldn’t tell if they were pushing him out or pulling him back.

With the sun in his eyes, he picked any path that looked like it would take him north or west and drove so fast the trees and anyone in them blurred together.

His phone was worthless—broken, covered in whatever that black shit was—and stars had come out by the time he found a gas station with an empty alcove where the payphone used to be and a cashier who wouldn’t let him touch the one behind the counter. He tried to explain he was in trouble, needed to call his family. They told him to stop getting the floor dirty.

He hung around waiting for someone who’d let him use their cell, but hardly anyone was stopping for gas, and no one that did had been interested in helping him. Instead, he sat in his car, letting out dry sobs at his footage, clutching at useless wads of paper towel. He stayed there until the employee came outside, telling him he’d bothered too many patrons, and he needed to leave.

He quit rubbing the filth into his suit and left.

Vin halfheartedly scuffed his feet across the lawn, tired enough to not really care about tracking it into the house, and guessed at what he was going to walk into.

A deathly quiet living room? He got that right. His parents and his friends waiting for him? A given with all the cars parked out front. His dog, howling low, scratching at his legs before running off, tail and ears drooping? Depressing. And expected.

His mom got to her feet, glaring, and bit out, “Why didn’t you answer your phone? Where have you been?”

“We, uh,” he said, stuffing hands in his pockets and looking at the floor, “Alex and I, we got…lost.”

“You got lost driving to Trenton?” She stared at him, followed him as he ducked his face to avoid making eye contact. “Did you wreck the car? Are you hurt?” she asked, suddenly softhearted, reaching towards him.

He backed away and said, “No, the car’s fine.”

Her face went cold again. “Are you doing drugs?”

“No!” he shouted, still avoiding eye contact, which didn’t support his denial. He was terrified, though, that he’d start crying if she could see him straight on, that he’d break down and beg for help they couldn’t give, and the police would show up to accuse them of playing games. 

“You disappear for the whole day,” she counted off. “You’re not hurt. You’re not giving us any explanation. What am I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

“So what’s that on your clothes?” She pointed at his cuffs and shoes. “Heroin?”

“No, Mom, what—if I were doing heroin, why would I have it all over my clothes?”

“Then what do you have all over your clothes?”

He couldn’t answer, and her eyebrows drew together hard. “Fine,” she said and walked past him, heading to the stairs. “I just want to help you, but who am I?”

His dad grunted, said, “At least you shaved,” and followed her.

Evan, Stephanie, and Jeff were waiting silently, looking sick. He figured it was probably grief over Jessie that had Evan looking in a bad way and actual nausea running through Steph, but Jeff, staring up at him, wringing his hands—

“Where’s Alex?”

Fear. 

He watched the tar fall in flakes off his shoes, then said in a low voice, in case his parents came back, “We—we ended up in the pine barrens.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and moved towards Jeff, but stopped short, reluctant to touch him with the sludge hanging on him. “He was gone when I woke up. I’m sorry. There’s video—”

Jeff dug his nails into his palms, stood up, and walked out.

 

Jeff started the car with a blank face and insisted he needed to be alone, while Vin held its door open. Jeff promised he’d be okay and that he’d call, and Vin felt like he didn’t have a choice except to let him go. Now, he was letting himself into Jeff’s house after a day of no one hearing from him. 

He wouldn’t answer Vin’s calls or texts, wouldn’t answer Steph on any of their social media, wouldn’t answer the door for Evan. He had even missed his shift at the hospital, and as his emergency contact, Jeff’s manager thought Vin should have some answers. He did not.

The sound of the door opening was heightened in the silence. Jeff had tried to make the house live again, with Vin and Evan taking over when he just couldn’t anymore, but overnight, it’d turned back into a tomb. It was like he hadn’t come home at all, and stale air and desolation had made themselves at home instead.

Vin found him on his parents’ bed, dead-eyed and unnaturally still. He’d barely acknowledged their room even existed after they passed, and Vin didn’t know what it meant to find him there, didn’t know how bad off he had to be to climb into their empty bed. He looked at his boyfriend curled up between ghosts, and all he could think to say was, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

He settled himself aside Jeff’s back, enough space between them that he could trail his knuckles down his spine, and asked, “What have you been doing?”

For a long while, he didn’t answer, and Vin stayed where he was until his posture became less strained, and Jeff rested his back against Vin’s hands. He said, “I’m getting rid of the house,” as Vin wrapped his arm around his chest.

“Okay,” Vin said, not knowing if he was serious, but not particularly caring about the damn house. “But have you eaten?” he asked, laying his palm in the center of Jeff’s chest. “Drank something?”

Jeff laid there unresponsive, and he finally let himself press his forehead into the back of his neck. “I don’t think you should be here alone.” He pulled Jeff against his chest and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to cry onto his neck. “Please, come home with me.”

 

Jeff had been serious about selling the house, and Vin would support him if Jeff thought it would help him deal with it all.

They drove to his house whenever they weren’t in school or at work, loaded down with stacks of cardboard boxes and cleaning supplies. They filled bags with things to donate and things to sell and took their chances putting boxes in the doctor’s storage unit since it was still theirs for a few more years anyway. They set aside things that Evan and Steph might want for their place, and Jeff made a pile for the hypothetical apartment he was going to rent.

On the good days, they could forget the dead who’d walked through the house and stay there goofing around all night, sorting through the decades stashed away in the garage and hallway closets, then curling up on a sofa or together in Jeff’s bed. On the bad days, they could only stand to be there for an hour or so before packing it in and going back to Vin’s house.

His parents were pretty understanding with them. They knew that Jeff needed time away from his sepulcher of a house, that he could only stare so long at his parents’ jewelry or Alex’s shoes before he needed to leave. They’d lost family members, too; they knew how hard it was to have to look at the sum total of a person’s life and decide how to distribute it. They weren’t heartless, but after a month of sporadically finding Jeff sleeping on their couches or in their son’s bed after Vin had gone for the day, they started hinting that maybe Jeff should spend some more time with Evan or Daniel.

They started spending more time at Jeff’s house instead. Pushing themselves to work for as long as they could, no longer sorting things to sell, just keep or toss. Jeff dragged boxes of Christmas decorations to the end of the driveway and stacked photo albums in storage tubs while Vin went through closets, throwing clothes into garbage bags and stuffing them into his car to drop off on the way to school. 

All while Jeff became quieter. He got distant after asking his coworkers for the names of real estate agents, and his mood soured further taking furniture out of the house, and the bruises under his eyes got darker even though every time Vin woke up, Jeff was laying still next to him.

 

“Seriously? Should I be insulted? I’m not gonna fall over because I got up to open a door,” Steph said, balling up an afghan and throwing it at them.

It hit Jeff in the chest, and he only caught a corner; the rest spilled out of his hands, and he bent over to gather it up. “We just didn’t want to bother you.”

“Congrats,” she said, raising her palms and tilting her head. “It’s the one time I’m home and not sleeping.”

Vin sat down, resting against the arm of the couch, leaving room for Jeff to stretch out across the cushions and spread the blanket over his legs. He asked, “How was the ultrasound?” while Jeff laid against Vin’s side and pulled out his phone.

“Fine, looks healthy.” She flopped into the armchair and carried on, “All the usual parts where they’re supposed to be.”

“Oh, come on,” Vin groaned.

Jeff said, “Tell us about your baby’s genitals.”

Steph scrunched up her face. “Okay. Gross.”

“Yeah, he’s vile.” He dragged his hand through Jeff’s bangs, did it again in response to Jeff’s quiet _you mad?_ “But, really, do you know what you’re having?”

She looked down and put a smirk over her nervousness. “A girl.”

“Hey! Great!”

“Yeah, names?” Jeff asked.

“I mean, it’s been a day, so _no_.” She put her hand over her mouth and paused. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Evan kind of wants her middle name to be Jessica, but I don’t think he’s sure.”

Vin didn’t know what to say, gave her a shrug. Jeff didn’t acknowledge her or Vin knocking him around with his shoulders, kept scrolling on his phone.

Steph asked, “What are you so focused on?”

“I need to find an apartment a poor college student can afford,” he said.

“There’s gonna be some one bedrooms opening up here.” She grinned. “You know, if you wanna be neighbors.”

“I don’t know if I can afford that. I’m still forecasting.”

“It’s pretty easy with two people,” she said, looking pointedly at Vin.

Vin frowned. “Okay, but neither of us works full-time.”

Jeff slipped lower on the couch, ending up with his head on Vin’s thigh, and hid his face behind his phone. “And I know you and Evan got cozy real quick, but we’re not.”

Vin snickered and said, “Dude, what do you call me practically living at your house?” then sighed. “It’d be nice to actually live together one day and not have to worry about what other people think.”

Jeff grunted, and Vin couldn’t tell if he was agreeing or not.

Steph laughed and made sorry attempts to muffle herself at Vin’s confused look. “It’s just, Evan’s mom won’t stop asking if we’ve set a date yet.” She put a hand to her head, said, “We can retreat, but we’re over there every weekend, and she won’t _stop_.”

“Oh well,” he lamented, “can’t blame a man for dreaming.”

Jeff sighed, put his phone in the pocket of his sweatshirt, and closed his eyes.

 

Steph quietly fell asleep in her chair, and Jeff sat up so Vin could lay down next to him, wrap an arm over him, and peer over his shoulder at apartment listings.

When Evan came home, he took one look at them on his sofa, huddled together in their hoodies and under blankets while Steph slept upright in shorts and a tank, and asked, “How close are you to listing it?”

 

Vin hadn’t meant for it to come out like that, like he was fed up with Jeff, didn’t mean for it to sound like he was angry at him. He was thinking more about the emails they would get about _stop watching_ than about what Jeff was feeling and how he would take Vin’s annoyed tone. The last thing he wanted was to be a person Jeff needed to get away from, but when Vin turned to get the camera out of his face, Jeff got to his feet and left the room. He hadn’t even noticed until he saw Evan look towards the door.

He found Jeff sitting at the kitchen table, head in his hands, and when he heard Vin’s footsteps, he asked, “What’s all this attention gotten us?”

Vin startled him pulling the chair out and away from Jeff’s, made him jump at the legs scuffing the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“We shouldn’t have done this,” he said and laid his hands on the table, picked at the sleeves of his cardigan.

Vin asked, “Do you think it would have been different if we hadn’t started?”

He didn’t answer the question, said instead, “I think I’m done working on the house for a while,” then told Vin, “You should go home.”

Vin went back to Evan and told him they were done.

 

Vin figured he was a total asshole for asking Jeff to film after he’d made it clear he was done with the camera, and he didn’t blame Jeff for giving him the silent treatment. If Vin wasn’t going to listen to him, why should he bother to keep explaining himself? He’d obviously asked Jeff for too much right after their disagreement, so Jeff must have thought he was being used or felt disrespected or was just too tired to deal with Vin’s bullshit.

Not that he knew if Jeff actually felt that way, as he wouldn’t answer any of Vin’s apologetic, groveling messages, wouldn’t come to the door, and when Vin used his key to let himself into Jeff’s half-emptied house, he wasn’t there. Vin couldn’t even ask Evan and Steph for help. No one was answering their door, either, and all his attempts to contact them went unreturned. 

His mom found him in the basement, flipping through photos with no plan to fix his mess, and asked, “Where’s Jeff?”

“With his relatives, I guess,” he said, trying for casual, but it sounded bitter even to him.

“Did you two fight?”

Vin sighed. “Yeah.”

“About?” she prodded, sitting next to him on the couch.

He started gathering the loose pictures together. “He got anxious all of a sudden about being filmed, and I thought he was over it.” He wrapped a rubber band around the stack, but it snapped, and pictures spilled over the floor.

She leaned over to help him clean, and he frantically swept the photos into a pile, grabbing them with his hands and pushing them with his feet. Giving him a look, she said, “He’s still having a rough time, isn’t he? I’m sure no one meant what they said.” She reached down and picked up a photo that had slid out of his reach.

Vin’s breathing stopped short as she looked at the picture, and his words came out hesitantly. “I don’t know.”

“Is this Evan? Who’s he with?” She passed the picture over and kept trying to figure out what was wrong. “Is Jeff okay?”

He shrugged, hoped she wouldn’t ask more about the photos. “ _I don’t know_. He won’t answer me.”

“Is that unusual for him?” she asked, as he turned the picture over and looked at the words written on the back.

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

 

**2 June 1993**

James’s life was hardly ever quiet.

In college, he had roommates coming home all hours of the day and night, from classes and jobs, from the libraries and bars, and no one ever bothered keeping their voices down. His whole life his mother was singing or baby-talking at their dogs, early to late. Even the times when he would visit his dad’s home, the house would be filled with guests, his arms filled with Harry, and his ears filled with the question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”, and he would think to himself, while he kept Harry entertained on his lap, _because we get to be a family tonight_.

When he met Em, her own apartment was quiet—peaceable neighbors who walked softly, only one roommate who spent most of her time elsewhere, insulated windows that blocked the noise of people walking to the park—but the home they made together was vibrant. If she wasn’t tapping pencils on the table in the echoing dining room, his clacking on the typewriter would be drifting up the basement stairs. When the record player wasn’t going, she’d share funny lines from novels, and he’d read her all the gross parts of his case reports. They were frequently yelling the answers to quiz shows and screaming laughing in the kitchen over the gelatin salads in the recipe book she got from the Sisterhood.

Then, they had a home filled with the warble of Evan waving instant film. Jeff reciting writing to make sure it sounded natural. Stephanie’s Hebrew lessons, Linnie’s spelling practice, and Vinny memorizing scripture. A house where there was always the hum of conversation over the rhythm of feet going up and down stairs. A house where someone was always coming or going and shouting hello or goodbye before closing the door too hard. A living, breathing home.

Fairmount—and every hospital he’d worked in since—was consistently loud. There were children constantly in the halls, being herded from one appointment to another, while doctors, nurses, and assistants discussed patients in the corridors. The PA system fired off endless announcements over ringing phones and outbursts from suffering children, and he’d had years of practice of letting the noise roll and break over him.

His life is, and always will be, messy and unpredictable, but rarely silent, so he doesn’t quite understand why the hum and buzz are so distracting today. It’s not like it’s the first anniversary he’s spent alone. Hell, the day they were married, he and Adam had to leave her and drive to sit with people he didn’t know, smoking and talking about research and grants, while she sat surrounded by the pieces of their old life.

 _Start as you mean to go on_ , he thinks. He shouldn’t have expected anything different.

It wasn’t a fair comparison, though; you couldn’t get much farther from Fairmount’s depressing conference rooms than a banquet hall.

The room was packed full of noise, ready to split at the seams and pour excited chatter and cheerful music out the doors. Squealing children were running in and out of the hall with their parents chasing after them, herding them back to the actual party games. There was even a reporter wandering around, stirring everyone up, and all the guests were eager to speculate for the article.

And all he wants to do is make his excuses, call Maryann, and toast their marriage alone, but the door opens again, and it’s not another one of Albert’s bored nephews trying to sneak away. Jack and Doris block his view before he has a chance to see who it is, and then Albert rushes over, pointing to him. James thought he’d been told of every available relative, but maybe there was a cousin they missed in all the activity.

He is absolutely not in the mood for anymore introductions or one more handshake or comment about the library. There is no energy in him to deflect another question about his research with talk of historical preservation, but he isn’t going to let himself be rude to any of Albert’s guests. James turns his face to school it into polite interest, and when their hand touches his shoulder, he turns back around into, his is certain, one of his nightmares.

But her face doesn’t deform, neither losing its smile nor having it sink into her skull. Her voice doesn’t turn into a hiss as she says his name. Her figure doesn’t twist out of its shape, and her nails don’t become claws as she draws him out of the chair.

“Em?” he asks.

His arms remain slack as she wraps hers around his neck. “Jim, what on earth have you been doing out here that this man is flying me to New Jersey?”

“His nieces—they were—Maryann?”

“I know I’m not supposed to be here,” she says, pulling him in tighter. “But how could I say no?”

James still has to work with these people. Albert’s nieces and their parents are meeting with him in a week. Jack’s going to see him again while he makes arrangements for the donation. He knows his weepy behavior and standoffish attitude haven’t gone over well with them tonight. He knows he’s really pushing it not even saying goodbye, but as long as no one stops them leaving, James doesn’t really care what they think about him.

The music’s still playing as they rush out of the hall, tears on their cheeks and arms draped across each other, spilling their laughter into the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you want any of those gelatin salad recipes, you let me know


	10. Psalm 146:9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how a few chapters back I talked about disjointed headcanons? It's that, but worse. No dates this time, and it goes back and forth between Fairmount and Fitness Series.
> 
> Additional Warnings: gore, deaths, The Baby, aftermath of an overdose, talking about vomiting, struggling to breathe, a lot of video games for some reason, me ceaselessly poking at proselyte stuff, and my transliteration choices

“Am I supposed to understand what’s happening yet?” she whispers, pressing in on Mom, dodging glances from the others heading home down the sidewalks or, like them, back across the parking lot.

Mom wraps her arm around her and assures her, “You don’t need to worry. There’s plenty of time to learn what it all means.” She puts her other hand in her pocket, jingling the keys as they come up on their car, and, giving Steph one more squeeze, meanders away to the driver’s side door. “It’s enough to learn the patterns right now. The language can come later.”

“Not just the words,” Steph argues over the roof. “There’s so much, and I don’t know if I can keep up.”

Which is partially true. She does fumble with the prayer book’s back and forth, can’t speak verse with the crowd, and has to stand there, mouth shut and out of rhythm, not knowing when to step or bow.

But it’s not hard to know when to stand and when to sit. It’s not hard to listen and answer with an _amen_ , even if it trails behind the rest of the congregation. It’s not hard to let awe raise goose flesh on her arms as the doors are pulled aside, and a scroll is lovingly taken into arms, like a child, to be held and blessed.

“Once upon a time,” Mom says, ducking into her seat, Steph following suit to hear her consolations, “I didn’t either, and you can still get turned around even if you’ve done it your whole life. That’s why he’s up there calling out page numbers, so everyone has a chance to get on track.”

Steph grabs at her seat belt and mutters, “That won’t help if I’m a hopeless idiot.”

“You are anything but a hopeless idiot.”

Steph makes a skeptical noise buckling herself in, then bends to roll her window down. The breeze comes gusting in, and she turns her face away, spitting hair out of her mouth. She expects to hear her mom start laughing at her, but she’s missed what happened, contemplatively staring at the steering wheel.

“Okay, I’m no rabbi, obviously, but,” she says, pausing her thought to put the key in the ignition. “But at Sinai, when we agreed to this, we said, we will do and we will understand.

“The doing comes first, the understanding comes later. You aren’t the first person to be in this boat.” She smiles and moves to put her window down, too, trying to get a cross draft before they take off. “In fact, you’re in pretty good company. No one is born knowing how to do this stuff.”

 

When Steph settled semi-permanently in their home, when she started leaving her blankets unfolded on the couch and finally took her clothes out of bags, placing them in baskets that she slid under tables, Evan’s sister swore to her that she’d found herself a decent apartment.

“It’s exactly what I need, but,” she trailed off, shifting her attention to the TV.

Steph rolled over on the couch to look at her fidgeting in the recliner. “But the game’s too much fun, and you’ve decided to postpone the move?”

“But the lease doesn’t start until June,” she complained, giving Steph a look usually reserved for her brother. “And, if you haven’t had enough and left, wise ass, I promise, you can have that room.” 

She tapped the controller on her thigh, squeezing it until the plastic creaked, and cursed at the swarm of birds. “I feel like shit making you sleep on a couch in a basement.”

“Your parents are _letting_ me sleep on a couch in the basement,” Steph pointed out as Liv groaned at the game again. “I’m just happy to have a place to stay.”

Olivia gave her a pitying look. “I guess. If you’re happy, I’m happy, but you can’t tell me you don’t want a room to yourself,” she said, gesturing to the TV. “You know, without us down here, invading your space.”

“To be honest, I’ve had enough time to myself.”

Liv accused her of being way too agreeable, but Steph meant it. She might have hated playing slumber party at first, but after a while, it felt right to be in a living house again.

It doesn’t even matter that she doesn’t fit in exactly, still shy around their parents, leaning on Ev and Liv as a crutch when she has to interact with them. It doesn’t matter there’s barely enough room in the basement for her stuff and everyone else’s. It doesn’t matter that she’s been slow getting used to tracking her own schedule again after a couple months of having no choice in the matter.

She’s so tired of enforced loneliness. She’s tired of hiding, and she doesn’t care how selfish it makes her.

For the foreseeable future, this is her house, too, and Steph doesn’t have any reason to feel awkward standing next to Liv’s dad while she makes toast. When Evan’s mom says good-bye, she says it back. Liv crowds her out of the fridge, and Steph pushes her way back in, the two of them laughing as they shove at each other. There’s a place at the table for her, and that’s where she sets her plate after they’ve left for the day. This could be the first of many familiar mornings. She’s not a stranger here.

She’s just sitting down to eat when Evan stumbles into the kitchen, later than normal, weary, with the phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder.

“Hey, slow down,” he says, taking it back in his hand. “Hold on—”

Jessie’s on the phone, upset and crying, voice loud but indistinct through the speaker.

“Someone _murdered_ Rose?”

Her hands clench around the plate in front of her as words that she doesn’t recognize tumble out of her mouth. Tongue working faster than her brain, she’s left to process the sounds flowing out then drying up, her mouth falling slack. The words made a wreckage crashing through her head, and picking at the rubble, she realizes she _does_ know what she intended to say. Blessed are You…King of the Universe…The True Judge.

On the other side of the room, Evan hasn’t acknowledged she’s said anything, doesn’t even look at her until her chair skids loudly across the floor.

“Sorry,” she whispers, giving no excuse as she leaves her food behind, and scurries out the door.

 

“What do I have to do?”

“Nothing. Except hold still.” Maryann lifts her hands and spreads her fingers. “And let me touch your head.”

Steph stands there, considering, while James and the boys sit at the table. As the oldest, she’s up first while Evan and Vinny and Jeff stare at her, trying to figure out what their turns will be like.

“Unless you don’t want me to touch your head? It’s the same either way,” she offers quickly, pulling her hands back to hold clasped together against her chest. 

Steph doesn’t know if that means Maryann’s nervous or excited, or if her smile’s going to falter the longer it takes her to make up her mind. She studiously watches shadows flicker across the carpet, so she can’t see anyone’s face, doesn’t want to know if her friends think she’s dumb for taking too long to decide, if Evan’s tapping his foot or if Jeff and Vince have started spacing out.

Everyone acts patient, at least. No one at the table has comments for them, and Maryann waits in her pose until Steph nods, tells her, “No, it’s fine,” and dips her head.

Fingers settle against her hair, palms against her scalp, and Maryann prays, “May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.”

She drifts, trying to recall any Sunday school stories she may have heard about the women being invoked. What were they like that generations of children have had their names intoned over them? Is it their love or their loyalty that so many parents want in their daughters? Did their devotion write them into books, or was it their perseverance? There’s a blank in her where their histories should be; she can only recall stories about their men. Abraham’s knife poised over his son, Isaac laying blind in bed, Jacob running and running away.

“—and grant you peace.” Maryann lifts her hands away from her head, and they settle on Steph’s shoulders. She’s quiet, but looking like she wants to say more, or she’s getting ready to cry. Steph doesn’t know if she believes in prayer, but she could understand why someone would think she needs more of it. It’s less credible that an adult could care about her enough to cry.

Steph doesn’t know what to do about either potential outcome, off-kilter and raw in a still unfamiliar house, participating in rituals she can’t name, with a woman who’s so concerned about her well-being, she might burst into tears.

To the side, James nudges Evan out of his seat. “Go on. It’s your turn.” He leans back, smiling as Steph backs out of Maryann’s hold and maneuvers around Evan to steal his seat, and knocking his knuckles into her shoulder, he tells her, “Good work, kiddo.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she whispers as Evan is exhorted to be like Ephraim and Manasseh.

“You made her happy,” he counters. “Seems like good work to me.”

 

When she ducks into the shop to get out of the heat, just for a second, just to get the sun off the back of her neck, there’s a new basket sitting on the counter. Peering inside, she finds it’s full of ceramic tiles that click together as she tips it closer. Colorful rectangles spill over each other. Dozens of red hands flash at her, a garden of miniature palms ordering her to stop. 

She’s uneasy at the sight and raises her hand to neck, grabbing for her necklace, a nervous tic she needs to quit. People don’t take her seriously when she plays with—nothing. Her hand catches on nothing, leaving her scratching at her throat. 

The thought overtakes her—sudden, flashing coherence—that there should be something else on the palms of these hands. The spiral isn’t quite right, she thinks, with her fist pressed into her breastbone. It’s something she can almost picture, like what’s supposed to be hanging around her neck.

“Are you finding everything okay?”

Steph jumps at the voice and stutters out surprised sounds, her arm jerking and rattling the tiles.

The owner stands over her while Steph takes a breath and searches for her words. “Um, maybe. What, what are these?” she asks, shaking the basket. “They look familiar, but—”

“Oh, they’re _hamsot_ ,” the woman explains as she raises her right palm and wiggles her fingers. “Hands of protection.”

Steph’s breathing goes ragged, abruptly reminded of just how much protection she needs. “Against what?”

“Depends on whom you ask. Envy, mostly, but people use them for just about anything.”

“That’s…interesting,” Steph mumbles, struggling to find something to say that won’t sound crazy. She could get away with _do they banish bad dreams_ , but it’s not like she can ask _will they make him stop watching with his_ —no eyes. That’s what she was thinking, that these hands don’t look right without eyes on the palms. What the—

“You’ve probably seen them before.” She holds her own hand out again and adjusts her thumb so the curve is more pronounced. “Maybe you’ve only seen them with fingers down? For other blessings?”

“I—I guess. That’s probably it.”

She smiles and kindly doesn’t mention Steph’s shaken appearance. “All right. Let me know if you need any help,” she offers, resting her hand on Steph’s, still gripping the basket.

 

Steph sighs and drops her chin into her hands. “I guess I could just be Atara.”

“It doesn’t sound like you want to be called Atara,” Mom counters, putting a full mug in front of her. “Here. Get your brain pumping.”

“Coffee isn’t going to change how much this sucks,” she complains. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She’s had the importance of names impressed on her several ( _thousand_ ) times in the last few years. It isn’t a being unto itself. A name carries layers of meaning, history, acronyms, numerical wisdom. It needs searching to find hidden details and digging to demystify unclear words and the thoughts of people dead for millennia. And not only do names tell a history, they guide; they can impart a future.

Out of all the things she doesn’t know how to do—get people to like her, fit in, sleep through the night—having to look into herself and somehow divine her own future seems a little daunting. She’s not even ready to live on her own, and she has to produce a prophecy. Might be a bit much to ask.

“Yael.”

She turns sharply to face Evan. “Shut up.”

“Hear me out.” He puts his palms together and lowers them to the table, knocking his hands against the wood at each syllable. “Ya. El.”

“It’s not happening, and all your suggestions are terrible.”

He gets close to her and tries to look serious for all of five seconds. “Dinah.”

Her cheeks go pink, and she promises him, “If you don’t stop, I’m gonna cut your bits off.”

Mom interrupts whatever terrible suggestion Evan was going to throw out next. “I can’t believe I have to say this. Please don’t threaten to cut your brother’s appendages off.” Putting her hand to her temple, she adds, “At least not where Linnie can hear.”

“Yeah, Abigail, think of the children.”

She swings her arm down in front of him in a chop. “Off.”

Loudly, from the living room, Jeff asks, “What do you think Steph’s name should be?”

Linnie looks away from the TV, tapping a finger on her lips, and after careful consideration, volunteers, “I like Chanah.”

It’s the first suggestion in a while that Steph doesn’t want to immediately shoot down, and she grabs her pen to put it in the notebook as a _maybe_ , but Evan’s furrowing his brow. “Vin, that’s your sister’s name.”

“Yeah,” he agrees with a shrug and wince.

“Maybe not that then,” Mom says apologetically.

Jeff sits up straight, attentive. “What’s wrong with Sarah? Same first initial and everything.”

“I don’t like it. That’s what’s wrong with it.” Her shoulders dip, and she can’t quite keep how exhausted she is from creeping into her voice. “All right, Vinny, everyone else has an opinion. What’s yours?”

“Well, Ruth’s off the table, I know, but,” he says, getting a hopeful note to his voice, “what about Naomi?”

Her groan is loud and disgusted and draws Dad into it, too. He pokes his head in from the kitchen as she’s grumbling into her arms crossed on the table. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re still trying to pick a name for the baby,” Mom says, patting Steph’s hand. “You have any insight into the matter?”

He thinks for a moment, drumming his fingers against the wall. “I don’t know about insight, but I’ve always liked Abigail.”

“See! Two for Abigail,” shouts Evan, and he lets his hand come down on her arm, landing a slap more loud than painful.

Vinny starts listing the more obscure names he can recall while Jeff chimes in with nouns she won’t bother to translate, both of them talking over each other in a racket loud enough she can get away with telling Evan, in voice that only he and their mom can hear, “Not only am I going to cut it off, I’m going to shove it up your ass when I’m done.”

He plants his elbows on the table, drops his chin his hands, and says, “Esther.”

 

Their list of rejected movies is extensive. Considerable. Had someone been writing them down, the paper would’ve been long enough to do a comedic unrolling out of the lounge, into the bar, around the corner, and through the bathroom.

And when Evan rejects another movie that Vinny suggests, he spitefully dumps the DVD cases in Evan’s lap, where they’re promptly flung into Jeff’s chest.

Lexi leans over and doesn’t bother to lower her voice. “Is it always this old-married-couple act?”

“Yeah, for the most part,” she admits, picking up a fallen case and whipping it back at Evan.

When Vinny told her he was planning a night where they could come over and get to know his new librarian girlfriend, Steph was leery.

“You’re really gonna bring her around us? Like this?” she’d asked, one day when he’d grabbed her from work, on their way to bother Jeff into getting out of bed on his day off.

“I’m not gonna stop trying to be normal.” He punched at the radio’s buttons like he was trying to crack them in half, his mouth dropping into a scowl. “I’m not letting them stop me from living.”

For all his confidence then, on the night itself, Vin lead her over to her and Jeff (spread across his couches) and Evan (spread across Stephanie and Jeff), and said slowly, like he was introducing her to another set of parents, “Guys, this is Lexi.”

Evan sighed, dramatic and resigned, with his back resting on her thighs, his toes poking Jeff’s ribs. “All right, let’s keep it normal for the next couple hours.”

Vinny made a nasty face behind her back, but Lexi laughed and informed them, “That’s _not_ necessary.”

She wonders if she regrets saying that now, as Jeff shakes _his_ head for umpteenth time. “No, not again. We’re not watching it again. Not tonight.”

“Come the fuck on. If you’re outvoted—”

“I will leave. I’m sick of it.”

“What do you think?” Lexi crosses her arms, asking as she turns away from Jeff’s steadfast refusal to zombie cinema. “Can you ever have enough of zombies?”

She scratches at the side of her head, trying very hard to not rub at her temples and give Lexi the wrong idea, but she’s so tired of the quibbling and would settle for just about anything right now. “I guess. It’s a staple around here, and sometimes you just need a break.”

“Can’t say I feel—” she starts, then jumps as Vinny hurls another plastic case into Evan’s chest.

“Here’s your damn zombies.”

“They’re ghouls, Vince,” he says, cradling the game. “You don’t call them zombies. It’s rude.” 

Then to Jeff, he asks, “Is this acceptable? Is this still fresh enough for you?”

Lexi peers over. “What is it?”

Evan looks at her, holding the case over his heart, affronted. “Never mind, I don’t care what Jeff thinks.” He makes for the gaming setup and sets the disc in the tray, like it’s his damn house or something. “It’s been decided, Lex. You need to learn about war.”

In a way, Lexi reminds Steph too much of Jessalyn—much more reserved—but independent and funny and accepting, uncaring that everyone in this group is a touch too weird, and she wants to love her instantly. Wants her to blend into the group, wants her to act like she’s always been here, _needs_ another friend after she’s been denied so long. And the ever-present anxiety telling her that this can collapse under her at any moment can shove off.

Lexi doesn’t seem to have any concerns though, doesn’t look any more nervous than someone meeting people for the first time might. Not squirming like her instincts are telling her to bolt. She doesn’t even balk at their dark humor—she laughs with them when the bodies on screen burst into indecipherable gore.

Steph can only hope it’s a sign things will go well for her and Vince, she’ll stick around, and things will work _this_ time—while also wondering if it wouldn’t be better for Lexi to excuse herself and starting running. You know, get a head start on the inevitable.

Why would she though, when they’re having such good time. Even though her lessons in war and how it changes are cut tragically short as their committee-designed courier—

“Ugliest in the wastes,” Jeff said. 

“Luckiest,” replied Evan, setting the stats. 

Vinny snorted, accepting the controller to handle the psych evaluation.

—is almost immediately killed by a deathclaw. 

“Rest in peace,” says Steph as their avatar goes flying. 

Lexi asks, “What the fuck was that?” to Vin, who waves his hands around in the air before pronouncing it “a minor setback.”

You could call it that. The disappointment over their lost work doesn’t last five minutes before Evan gets his hands on more zombies as they switch to throwing cheat codes at some slaughter fest starring a vampire—

“Half-vampire,” Vinny and Jeff say along with the game. 

Steph quips, “Is this what y’all’ve been doing in your free time? Memorizing these mediocre cut scenes?”

Evan holds his palms up and out, pumping them in the air. “Wait, hold on a second. First off, _y’all_.”

Touching Lexi’s shoulder, Jeff explains, “Alabama,” like it’s some tragic disease.

“Excuse me, fuck you,” she says, pointing at him and Evan. “If I never hear you guys say _youse_ again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Second,” Evan goes on like she’d never said a word, “if you think that’s bad, it’s because you haven’t got him started on Deadly—” 

Vinny suddenly grabs for Lexi’s hand and addresses her as Zach, reciting, “Clear as a crisp, spring morning!”

They move past quoting hokey dialogue at each other and finally get to slaughtering the reanimated dead when Evan throws his arm around Steph and shouts, “Nazis wanna come out and play?” as Lexi smashes glass and a distorted echo plays back the taunt.

“That is so fucking creepy,” Steph says, pushing herself against Evan. Because it gets her closer to one of the speakers. “I love it. Will they do it again?”

Lexi laughs and pauses the carnage to pull a pen out of her bag. Unable to find paper to go with it, she leans across Evan to grab for Steph’s arm.

“I’m telling my supervisor to hire you, so you better send her your resume,” she orders, scribbling an email address on Steph’s skin. “You’ve got the customer service for it, and I want a cool coworker.”

Evan laughs at the look on her face, her mouth dropping in shock. She tries to argue, “I don’t know a damn thing about working in a library,” but Lexi waves her off.

“It’s so easy; don’t worry about it.” She smirks to herself before telling Steph, “Though sometimes, when the work piles up, you just wanna take some gasoline—”

 

“—some, some gasoline and a match, and—”

Jeff stuff his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. “I guess that’s one way to solve your problems.”

“You don’t know.” She jabs her finger at him. “You’re on the front desk talking to people. You haven’t seen where this crap gets filed. You don’t know how good it’d look going up in flames.”

He laughs at her, but agrees, “Yeah, fine, I’d like to never have to send another form off ever again.” He falls back against the wall and eyes the ashtrays spread around the waiting area. “You want me to set it on fire in front of them or wait until they leave?”

She flops against the wall next to him, thinking it over, deciding how she’d have rather dealt with the documents she’d shoved away this afternoon. “Burn it underneath the desk so they can see the smoke but can’t know for sure.”

“Kids, are you threatening to destroy patient files again?” their dad asks, coming upon them in the lobby, waving at them to follow him out the door.

“Yes,” Steph confesses as she and Jeff push themselves up and trail behind him to the car.

“God, that sounds nice right about now.”

Steph is on a roll tonight, worked up and unwilling to let it go. “Then sign my petition to burn all the files, and just start over.”

“Sure, sweet pea,” he agrees easily, unlocking the doors for them. “Start with our family’s first.”

 

She thought if she could get away, all the people she’d dragged in would forget. Maybe not right away, but soon. After the confession she’d scheduled to post.

She thought if she admitted how horrible she was, everyone would shuffle off and head home. Even though it hadn’t worked on Jessa.

She thought if she said the law had sunk their claws into her, no one would come looking for her because the state was too powerful for a bunch of teenagers to fend off.

She’s had plenty of time to think in here, plenty of tears to cry over her terrible decisions, and plenty of plans to make for where she’ll move after she’d decided her seclusion was up.

Never in her two months of dreaming did she imagine that one of those stupid boys would burst into her room in the night and drag her by the wrist back into the thick of it.

 

The screwdriver doesn’t make quick work of the dandelions, but it gets the job done with minimum damage.

Weed killers erode stone. Weed killers also kill grass. Weed killers smell plain awful, and she’d scrunched up her nose at the scent of the least acidic one the hardware store could provide, fanning the air in front of her face for hours after the fact.

She twists her wrist and uses the pressure of her whole body to make their roots pop out of the dirt, then tosses them into piles to be thrown away with the litter. There’s an uneasiness in her bordering on guilt as she tears them out of the ground.

But it’s her responsibility now.

When she was in her first period of study, her rabbi had asked her to take on a project like the younger kids do, so she could learn more about what it means to keep the commandments. Mom told her about crocheting blankets when she was a little girl. Dad recommended raising money and named several causes he thought she might especially like. Jeff said, sitting next to her, cross-legged on his bed, “Why don’t you do something with—what’s the thing where you do more because it’s a joy and not a chore?” and Vinny looked up from the floor, trying to agree with him, but Evan yelled _siddur matzah_ , and she tossed her notebook across the room and onto his stomach where he laid on Vin’s bunk.

“Nah, your project can be anger management classes,” he said, after she was done pointing at him and telling him he _was_ stupid for going through so much effort to _look_ stupid, so she threw her pen at him, too.

And had chosen to comfort the mourners. 

She’s still not around much for funerals, not unless they’re desperately short a tenth person. The people from Canton are more likely to want her around, but the people who live in Louisville and Alliance? The ones who really use this graveyard? They still stare at her more than speak, and yard work kept (and keeps) her out of their way.

Dad had volunteered to be the one to teach her how to use the equipment, putting on his bucket hat and spending an afternoon with her threading fishing line and sharpening blades in front of the little shed at the graveyard. They got a quiet couple of hours to themselves; no one ever had to accept a blanket, or a painting, or money from her; and all she does is show up once a week to check for trash and see if the grass is too high or leaves have piled up. If not, she pulls weeds and feels weird about it.

Steph’s favorite flower is a weed no one wants around anymore.

She swears she remembers a time when there were towering mounds of the stuff around their town—their old town. The one where she lived with Mama and Daddy and had so many older brothers to play with and an eldest sister who would take her on car rides where she’d see trees and abandoned houses swallowed whole. Buzzing street lights and nail-studded telephone poles taken over. Purple flowers standing straight in the hazy summer heat with her trying to roll down the window to get the smell of grapes if there was enough of them.

Her aunt told her there wasn’t anything like that where she’d lived, not in Pottsville, and any hanging around Centralia were kept clipped in someone’s garden. Goofy kid. 

She meant before, long before, but no one listened. Then they weren’t around to listen.

It’s not here in Ohio. Yet. No one’s put them on alert, instructed them to report the vines should they appear in vacant lots or near railroad embankments. She hasn’t found any to pry out of the earth at least. 

With the sun on the back of her neck and rocks in her knees, she apologizes as she plucks the dandelions and thistles. She thinks the colors of the clovers and ground ivy look beautiful against the concrete gray of the headstones. The bees hum in her ears and pass her by while she takes fistfuls of their food and throws it in the trash. These have value. Someone wants them.

But mourners take no comfort in them. And she rips them out.

 

Once upon a time, Jessa kissed her forehead and pulled her close, saying, “That’s awful. I’m so sorry,” and swearing that she didn’t think any differently about her.

“I don’t think you’re scary at all.” She promised, “You’re my friend; I’m not going to run away from you.”

She takes what she’s learned from her and turns it to Evan when he looks hesitant to touch her. Taking him by the wrists, she tugs him close, gets him to lay against her on his bed.

“I’ve seen scary, dude,” she assures him, guiding his arms around her waist, then bringing his face in close. “You ain’t it.”

 

Evan snorts at her as he climbs up the frame, sending tremors through her and the bed. “Really?” he challenges. “That’s what you’re gonna name yourself?”

She taps her toes together, rolls her eyes at the ceiling, and scoffs. “Like you even have an opinion on it. There’s not enough blood in that part for you to remember it.”

“I remember plenty of things about Jacob,” he says and counts them off. “He fucked over his brother, he fought God, and he didn’t even want to marry her. Why would you name yourself that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, bullshit, you don’t know. You’ve been looking at etymologies and wracking your brain for months.” He walks on his knees across the bed before flopping down next to her. “And you’re gonna look me in the eye and say you don’t know.”

“I _don’t_ know! Once Mom said it, it just felt right. I don’t know why I like it.”

Evan props himself up on his elbow and stares down at her, twisting his mouth, silent for what feels like ages.

“...do you absolutely hate it?”

“No, I don’t hate it,” he concedes, dropping down again, face to face. “But I don’t understand. You’re better than that.”

“I’m not though. I—” Guilt lodges the words in her throat, sticky and hot as her past rears up in her head.

He grabs her arm, gently shaking her and pulling himself closer. “Hey, come on, how do you say it in Hebrew? Is it the same as English?”

She tells him, quietly forces out the whole name she’ll be known by, the name they’ll call when she rises from the pool. The name that might go on a marriage contract. The name that marks her as a convert.

Evan’s eyes go wide, and she realizes her mistake too late.

“Like Star Wars?” he shouts in surprise, way too close to her face. “You’re naming yourself after—”

She pushes at his chest. “Shut the fuck up, I swear—”

“This is a Star Trek family!” he scolds, gripping her tighter, rolling her back and forth over the mattress, until she can’t get her words out because she’s laughing too hard.

 

Steph’s never been much of a cook.

In the first place, she never had to be. Her sister had been at an age where she’d only wanted the sugariest cereals and would happily serve them to herself whenever she wanted. Her brothers had been young enough to ask for macaroni at every meal, socially appropriate or not. Her mom and dad, who often worked late, had come home one Saturday, when she was still an only child, with a big freezer chest that sat full from then on out in their garage. Not even her grandparents had attached any importance to home-cooked meals.

In the second, she lived with her parents until the day she couldn’t. She’s never had to make sensible decisions on her own, never been responsible for grocery shopping, never learned how to cook a vegetable other than a potato, and all she picked up in her few months living alone was which buttons to press to make the microwave flash _child_ at her.

Evan knows this. He’s seen what she makes when she has sort out dinner for herself, if there aren’t leftovers, if she’s not so tired all she wants to do is shovel popcorn in her mouth and keel over, so him asking her to hang around in his kitchen, brainstorming ideas with Jessie for what they’ll all eat is ridiculous.

She’s done trying at this point, only throwing out the names increasingly expensive seafood because Jess laughs at every one she says.

And from her position on the counter, Jessie’s taking it about as seriously as Steph is. Hasn’t suggested anything past, _forget it, we should just get take out_ , when she poses her a question.

She leans back on her hands and, gently swinging her feet, asks, “Did you have Jewish friends in Alabama?”

For one brief moment, she doesn’t know what Jess’s getting at and answers casually, “No. I mean, if I did, they never said anything.”

“So, here then?”

Apprehension kicks in, creeping up Steph’s spine. She wonders for a split second if she could get away with lying. You know, come to think of it, it came up in art class of all places. In fact, Jessa must have mentioned it. Since you guys were such good friends. What a small world. 

But she doesn’t actually know what Jessie’s talking about. 

She never looked up what she said, only had a gut feeling of what language it was, and she may have had her requisite Sunday school education—enough to know the highlights, to know how humanity twists things to suit themselves, to know about floods—but not enough know anything about blessing judges and kings. Doesn’t know why words were pouring out of her mouth. Would only let herself guess at why she’d said it.

It’s hard enough to say anything with her mouth going dry, much less try to explain her way out of another fucking inexplicability. “My only friends are you guys.” She swallows and grits out, “Why?”

“Just wondering who taught you what to say when you hear terrible news.”

Evan walks in shaking his hands, flicking water over the floor, and Jessie swings her feet harder as she says, “Because he thinks I’m crazy, but I know I heard you say it.”

He hops up, perching on the counter next to her, tapping his toes against her kicking feet. “Why do I think you’re crazy?”

“When you came over a month ago? For the binder? I told you Steph knows what to say,” she trails off, gesturing a _you know_.

“Oh yeah,” he says, distracted and picking at the frays in his jeans. Steph’s trying very hard breathe evenly while calculating a way out of the kitchen while he’s busy, but he’s going on, “She thinks you speak Hebrew or something.”

“You don’t have to speak Hebrew to know a few words,” she chides, her eye roll audible. “I don’t think you guys speak Yiddish because you go around calling everyone shmucks.”

Steph is sitting as still as possible, praying that they’ll get into an argument, that they’ll let themselves get wrapped up in Evan not knowing what a word literally means, and she can slip out, lay down in the basement, be forgotten.

But Evan faces her again. “So, whats the verdict? Did you say it or not?”

Her body’s frozen, but her face is hot. Her mouth opens, but no noise will come out.

 

She’d wobbled her way up the slope of the yard, panting and latched onto Dad’s arm, sure she’d topple over if he wasn’t there.

“You’ll go easy on them, won’t you, sunshine?” he kidded as he lead her to the front door. He hadn’t stopped since she was awake and stable, joking with every nurse and aide that she had a boxing match coming up, asking her doctors if she’d be able to go soon because she had a triathlon next week. Then patting her hand and shooting her sad smiles when she’d wheeze and sag into the ICU’s bed.

As awful as it was in there, she kind of wanted to go back to that quiet, empty room. Only her parents had been allowed in to see her while she was in intensive care, and she’d only been out in a normal bed for one last overnight observation before she’d been released. The thought of facing them all was on the edge of sending her into a panic, and she confessed, “I just want to lay down.”

Her dad begged her, “Stephie, please, just say hi to them. They’ve been scared to death.”

“I _can’t_ ,” she said, voice cracking, truly unable to hold back a gasping rattle of a breath.

He buckled under and let her tuck herself close. With her hiding under his arm, away from the faces she could see through the wide front window, he lead her in and upstairs.

“I can’t compromise on this, sweetheart,” he said, cracking the door after she’d changed into pajamas and put herself back in bed. At noon. “I’m sorry if the light gets in, but we have to monitor your breathing.”

And they did. She kept her face pointed at the wall, and they didn’t try speaking to her, but she could tell when someone was at the door, casting their shadow over her best attempts at steady, even breaths. Hoping if she faked sleep, she could convince them to stay silent. Or she would actually fall asleep.

That hadn’t worked. She’s still awake after the light in the hall had gone and stayed out, the rest of the house crawling off to bed. She’s just…there. Existing. Awake and restless and alone, waiting for someone to wake up, not be able to sleep because of her stupidity, and come flip the light on to watch her struggle.

She lays there for hours until she hears footfalls on the carpet, but no light fills her room when they get close, even when the door opens as they creep inside.

She’s expecting Linnie, resigned to her climbing across the mattress, having given up trying to sleep with the boys, not able to get comfortable even curled against Jeff’s back.

But the weight on her bed doesn’t come. Whoever it is drops onto the trunk at the foot of her bed, sighing.

Steph doesn’t doesn’t jerk when her mom’s hand touches her foot because she’s concentrating too hard on maintaining her breathing. Making it seem like she’s peacefully sleeping and not drowning in shame.

Mom starts speaking—not to Steph. To herself. Quietly. Enough that Steph can’t understand what she’s muttering, thinks she catches a list of names when she cuts herself off with a muffled sob, continuing louder when she restarts.

“— _hu yivarech virapei_ —”

Her hand squeezes Steph’s ankle, and Steph inhales too hard, but Mom doesn’t stop praying.

“— _et hacholah Leah bat Miriam_ —”

Steph doesn’t make any more noises to interrupt her, but only because she bites her lip hard enough to bleed.

 

Evan’s mom runs her hand slowly up and down Steph’s back, over and over, trying to help keep her breathing deep and even. “Claire’s a mother who unfortunately knows far too much about grief. I doubt she’s mad at you.”

Steph wipes the wet rag around her neck and over her face, unconcerned with smearing her glasses, just desperate to cool down. She sags forward, resting her arms on her thighs, and mumbles around the ginger candy in her mouth, “If you say so.”

The anxiety in the room’s getting to everyone, it seems. Beth starts dragging her fingers through Steph’s ponytail, flattening the hair against her back, then fluffing it back into shape. Tucking a strand that had fallen into Steph’s face behind her ear, she assures her, “You are not the first gal to get sick at a funeral.”

But she might be the first person to choke on the wish that the mourning family be comforted, then run gagging out of the graveyard to puke in the road. How many people could have possibly spent the last minutes of their friend’s funeral blocking a sidewalk, curled up half on the curb strip, suppressing the urge to use the spigot near the gate to pour water over their head? Did all those other people need their friends to help move them, suddenly so dizzy and weak-kneed they thought they’d pass out before getting to their car?

“If it’s any consolation,” Beth says, rubbing circles between her shoulder blades, “Jessie would’ve loved that someone threw up at her funeral.”

Steph gives her a weak laugh as she watches Evan and Jeff make countless unanswered calls to Vin and Alex, wondering if she’ll be ruining more funerals soon.

 

She leaves behind the splashing and spitting from the bathroom. The creaks from climbing over the bunk bed. The rustle of cloth draping over bodies. The soft snoring from the little girl in her room. The squeaking of the stairs as she steps into the living room.

It’s long gone quiet downstairs. Nothing besides crickets and a box fan, the living room cool and dark.

She raises her knuckles to their open door and, peeking in, the two of them are still awake—sort of. Mom’s the only one reading; Dad’s upright, but falling asleep on her shoulder, his book slipping out of his hands.

Mom catches her gaze before she can tap on the wood and points to their bathroom with a questioning look, but Steph shakes her head.

“I wanted—you never said what _you_ think my name should be,” she whispers, resting her hip against the door jamb. “What would _you_ have named me if I’d been your kid from the start?”

Her face blanks briefly, changes to pained and back again to thoughtful, staying there for seconds stretching out.

“When I was your age,” she starts slowly, sliding to the edge of the bed, easing him down as she goes, “I wanted to a name a daughter Smadar.” 

Approaching Steph in the doorway, she explains, “I learned the word as blossom, but also, a bud, and I do think it fits you, but maybe not as much as it could.”

Steph’s cheek feels warmer being held by her hand, as she listens to her wax philosophical about suitability and appropriateness.

“How many mothers get to meet their children before they name them?” she asks, then pauses, lets her thumb drag across her cheek, and looks directly into Steph’s eyes. “But knowing you now, I think I’d have named you for my mother.”

 

She hauls another bag upstairs, slick plastic slipping through her wet hands. It’s a narrow save, her being able to catch it in her grip before it goes tumbling away from her and down the staircase. Giving up carrying it, she eases it to the ground and drags it the last few feet into her parents’ room. Then, as gently as she can manage, she raises it again and sets it next to the one already waiting on their bed.

This was only the second, and her arms are already weak, and this one felt so much heavier than the first. 

The first one was light, small. Probably a brother. Maybe this one was her dad.

She presses her hands against her mouth, drags them back, up across her cheeks, near her temples, and into her hair. The gore on her fingers sticks in the strands, the blood on her face drying into a flaking crust. When she finds it in herself to cry, her daddy’s not gonna be there to get her to stop, won’t tease her for getting her face all dirty. 

This moment was coming for her since the day she was born; she should be able to accept the cold, hard facts. They’re dead because of her, and she doesn’t get to cry until she’s finished what she started.

She retreats from the bedroom, eyeing the bags as she backs into the hallway. The copper scent doesn’t dissipate out here. She’s drenched, and it’ll follow her forever at the pace she’s going.

But she won’t stop until she has them all together again.

She traces her bloody footprints across the carpet and down the stairs, out the door to bring in the rest.

 

Her head bobs back and forth as Vin tugs at her hair, and she tells him and Evan as the room sways, “I just don’t want to forget doing it because I’m nervous.” They hum in acknowledgment, and she keeps explaining, “I thought I was gonna pass out because a stranger had to see me naked, but I forgot she was even there.”

“But you remember the rest of it, right? Hell, you remembered the things you had to say, didn’t you?” Evan rolls over on Jeff’s bed, addressing her upside down. “No one had to be like, _psst, Steph put your glasses on, and read this shit_.”

“Well, yeah,” she hedges. “But I also didn’t have to do anything else besides dunk myself. I don’t want to freak out and set myself on fire.”

“Altar boy’d know all about that.”

She can feel Vin’s irritation shaking through his hands, but to his credit, he stops braiding and doesn’t pull her hair as he glares across the room. Evan holds up his hands as a sign up peace—the effect somewhat lost with him upside down, head dangling off the bed—but Vin’s placated and resumes picking out strands to wrap around each other.

“How do you feel? Has it sunk in yet?” he asks, probably thinking of how he was after his own initiation, dazed and not entirely sure of himself.

“Not really. Nothing’s changed, I guess, except I have more responsibility.”

“Wow, you gotta do more work after two years of it already, and you had to get naked for it, too?” Evan turns back over and sits upright to pronounce his judgment. “Raw deal.”

“Well,” she says with a shrug. “You know.”

“If you want something bad enough,” Vin says, looping the elastic in place.

 

Evan’s body stands over her, all smug looks and wheezing breaths. Her—her _what_? Boyfriend? Best friend? The other fucking piece of her is—has been barely more than a fucking zombie, piloted by some terrible thing that, even though it has her and Jeff in jagged pieces, won’t stop _scolding_ them for their stupidity, their uninformed choices, while alternately praising them for _nothing_ and threatening to keep torturing the three of them.

“You’re the only one of them who actually understands the power of a name,” it says, cradling her daughter in its blood-soaked arms. “So, I’m giving you the chance to really name her, give her a good one. None of that Renée Jessica shit he talked you into.”

It throws its head back, cackling. “Which, hilarious, by the way. Is that why you agreed to it? Did you think it’d get you something?”

She twists up her face and keeps her mouth shut.

“You don’t have anything clever to say? Oh, I get it,” it taunts. “You’re thinking of a good name for her.” He jostles her baby in its arms. “Well? What’s it gonna be?”

This fucking cordyceps nightmare, this fucking fungus that’s been eating Evan takes a hand away from the bundle in its arms to suck the blood from its fingers, and she spits at him, “Mara. Her name’s Mara.”

It pops its finger from its mouth and howls, quaking with laughter. “You are so fucking funny. Every time I think I’ve heard all the word play there is to hear from you, there you go again,” he sighs like an indulgent parent. “But I think you might have forgotten something.”

She’s not giving it the satisfaction of hearing another sound from her, not that it stops it from hissing and grinning. “That’s awful close to your mommy’s name, and it’s bad luck to name after the living.”

 

Mom absentmindedly shakes the matchbox as she leaves the hot kitchen, heading to the much cooler dining room, like she’s done every week since they brought them into their home.

One afternoon in late spring—not _that_ late, but the middle of May and warm enough that it was summer as far as anyone still in school was concerned. So, only Linnie at their house, the principal having pushed them off the roster as soon as he could get Mom to agree they were sufficiently educated. God forbid they ask to participate in graduation.

But it was nice to get a head start, she guessed. Nice to have more time outside when it wasn’t sweltering yet. It hadn’t even been close with the way the wind was picking up that day. She’d had to duck into the recessed doorway of her doctor’s office, picking her hair out of her face while she waited for her ride.

Usually, it was Dad leaving work early once (or twice) a week to drive them both home. Occasionally, it was Jeff, also heading home. Or making the trip back to Canton so she didn’t have to ride the bus. Because he rarely had anything better to do, and she never minded taking the long way home.

Hardly ever was it anyone else.

That day though, Mom pulled into the lot, practically vibrating in her seat as Steph climbed, confused, into an otherwise empty car.

“Hey! How was everything today? Are you too tired to run errands?”

“Hi…today was fine; I feel okay. What’s going on?” She glanced around the backseat, sure she had overlooked a little girl. “Where’s Linnie?”

Mom didn’t seem worried about her missing passenger. In fact, she looked way too excited to be in a Canton parking lot and asking about a trip to the bank. “Evan’s picking her up today,” she explained, and at Steph’s muffled snort, she rolled her eyes. “It’ll be _fine_. I just thought we should make the time to find a new outfit for you.”

“Is something happening?” she asked, mentally sorting through a calendar of two religions’ holidays and their extended family’s birthdays, trying find the anniversary she’d forgotten, hoping someone hadn’t died.

The dots only connected when Mom looked at her side-eyed. “Stephanie, seriously?”

“Oh…”

“I mean, you can wear your interview clothes everywhere else, and I won’t make you stay at the store long, but it’d be nice for you to have something special for the lunch.” She cocked her head and spoke casually, trying to persuade her. Not especially concerned her daughter had spaced on how close her meeting with the rabbis actually was.

“It is _sort of_ a momentous occasion,” Mom said, placing her hands in her lap.

You wouldn’t think a weekly holiday would be an event anymore, but that eager feeling at seeing Dad drag the candle box out of the sideboard cupboard hasn’t gone away. He hands it off to Mom who fills the holders with all seven that she’ll light. Then, one for Linnie. And one for Steph.

When Mom had decided her future bat mitzvah might want something prettier to wear than a button-up and pleated skirt while she hung around trays of cold cuts, there had been few days left between then and there. She’d just been lulled into forgetfulness by the rhythm of daily life. 

She’d been living this way—in between, neither nor, moving towards but never reaching—for years. Why should it end? Even after setting the date, of course she’d forget that it wouldn’t keep on like that forever.

Her eyes must have looked huge behind her glasses because Mom laughed and grabbed her hand. “Did it sneak up on you? Don’t worry; you’ll do fine.”

Her brain rattles with the coins she adds to the box after Linnie and Mom, and she shakes her head trying to clear it as they gather around the sideboard while Dad and the boys drop their change in, too.

Mom was right about how it turned out, as expected. Everyone was very accommodating, giving her all the time she needed to gather herself and find her words. She let them quiz her, about her culture and actions and her dedication and surety, and they let her ramble about the joy of doing, of building and blessing. Even before the mood turned from an exam to a chat, Steph hadn’t been worried they’d say no, not when her rabbi had flat out said he thought she was ready (“I can’t make the decision for you, but after coming this far, after all this study,” he’d said, turning his palms up, letting her fill in “If not now, when?”).

Well, she got her approval, and she got to walk down those steps into living water. But she’s not quite sure she walked back out.

Not in a bad way, per se. Not like drowning. Not like she’s losing her breath, and the life’s seeping out of her. Just, like maybe it didn’t take, and she’s still waiting to be born. Like the world’s at a standstill, and she’s waiting on an edge for something to tip her one way or the other.

Next to her, Linnie lowers her hands, and Mom passes the matchbox to Steph. When she doesn’t turn to the sideboard with it, Mom nudges her around. “It’s fine. It’s basically just like all the times you’ve done it before.”

And even though Steph still feels like she’s underwater, she faces her candle and strikes the match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost a year ago, I saw the word "Kaddish" next to Vince and started working myself into a fine, rich lather over the poem ("It was going to happen anyway, but now it's so much worse."; "How many times does a person die?") and the prayer ("Just whose kingdom are we talking about here?"; "He's DEAD! Was there anyone even left to pray for him?") when my shitty brain took the opportunity to suggest, now imagine Steph and Maryann lighting candles for Shabbat. And it only took what 40,000 words to get there? Wild.


End file.
